


WOMAN IN MISSIONS: 

PAPERS AND ADDRESSES 


PRESENTED AT 

THE WOMAN’S CONGRESS OF MISSIONS 


GCTOBKR 2-4, 1893, 


HALL OF COLUMBUS, CHI( 




NOV 30 189 


COMPILED BY 
REV. E. M. WHERRY, D. D., 


> '°f : WASHES' 1 ' 


5)5 


CORRESPONDING SEC’Y WORLD’S CONGRESS OF MISSIONS. 


— 


US 


AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

TO EAST 23d STREET, NEW YORK. 



COPYRIGHT, 1894, 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 





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892 


PREFACE. 


The great Columbian Exposition of 1893 was dis¬ 
tinguished above all other Expositions by the Series of 
Congresses which were held in connection with it. 
These Congresses covered almost every branch of 
science and art. None among them was of greater 
interest to the multitudes who attended than the series 
known as Religious Congresses. Among these, special 
interest attached to the Woman’s Congress of Missions, 
which had been organized and convened by a com¬ 
mittee of ladies with Mrs. Franklin W. Fisk, of Chi¬ 
cago, as chairman. The programme was comprehen¬ 
sive. The writers and speakers chosen represented 
woman’s work in all parts of the Christian world. The 
Congress extended over three days, and was full of 
interest throughout. 

The compiler of the papers and addresses contained 
in this volume has endeavored to present them in such 
form as will insure to the reader a participation in 
some of the best things enjoyed by those who were 
fortunate enough to be present at the Congress itself. 
Many excellent papers and addresses presented at the 
Congress have been omitted, partly from necessity, 
partly because they covered substantially the same 



4 


PREFACE. 


ground as those now published, and partly because 
they did not fall in with the special purpose of this 
volume. 

While, therefore, this work cannot be regarded as a 
report of the Woman’s Congress of Missions, we be¬ 
lieve it will accomplish in some degree the purpose 
suggested by the Hon. C. C. Bonney, President of the 
World’s Fair Congress Auxiliary, in the following 
words, quoted from his address introductory to the 
proceedings of this Congress: “However important 
the proceedings of this Congress may be to those 
who will have the pleasure of participating in them, a 
thousandfold greater will be their use if they should be 
widely published and circulated throughout the world. 
We hope, therefore, that the government of the United 
States, or some other providential aid, will enable us to 
put the proceedings of this and the other Congresses 
of this wonderful Exposition season in the leading 
libraries of the world, where they will be accessible to 
those who lead the thought of the world in the differ¬ 
ent departments of progress.” e. m. w. 


Chicago, Sept. 12, 1894. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 

Introductory Address to Woman’s Congress of Missions— page 7 
By Mrs. Franklin W. Fisk. 

The Reason Why- 10 

By Mrs. Benjamin Douglass. 

WOMAN AND THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS. 

Woman Under the Ethnic Religions_ 20 

By Mrs. Moses Smith. 

Women Under the Jewish and Christian Religions_ 36 

By Elizabeth Rmidle Charles. 

HISTORICAL PAPERS ON WOMAN’S MISSIONS. 

English Female Missionaries- 57 

By Charlotte Mary Yonge. 

The Society for Promoting Female Education in the East—— 73 
By Miss E. Jane Whately. 

History of Woman’s Organized Work as Promoted by Amer¬ 
ican Women- 83 

By Miss Ellen C. Parsons. 

The Zenana Bible and Medical Mission- 112 

By Lord Kinnaird. 

Woman’s Work in Connection with the London Missionary 

Society----. 121 

By Miss Caroline Whyte 










6 


CONTENTS. 


WOMAN AND THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 

Woman’s Work for the Afro-American--- 125 

By Miss Mary G. Burdette. 

WOMAN AND MEDICAL MISSIONS. 

Medical Missions—their Importance _ 145 

By Isabella Bird Bishop. 

Woman’s Medical Work in Missions__ 156 

By Mrs. J. T. Gracey. 

THE WORK OF DEACONESSES. 

Methodist Deaconesses in England_ 175 

By Miss Dora Stephenson { u Sister Dora ”). 

Deaconesses and their Work- 182 

By Mrs. Lncy Ryder Meyer. 

WOMAN AND EDUCATION IN MISSIONS. 

Work of Woman’s Schools and Colleges in Missions. ..198 

By Mrs. Darwin R. James. 

Place of Woman’s Missionary Work Among the Evangelistic 

Forces of the Church_213 

By Mrs. A. F. Schauffler. 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD ....226 

By Edna Dean Proctor. 











WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 

BY MRS. FRANKLIN W. FISK. 

There has been much confusion in the minds of 
many people, and it is no wonder there should be, with 
regard to all the various Congresses and Conferences 
which have been held and are still to be held within 
these halls. There have been many queries and much 
discussion as to their significance and their relative 
value. Each particular Committee has felt that its 
work was the most important, and its own special 
Congress was paramount to all others in importance, 
and perhaps the only one which, like beauty, was “ its 
own excuse for being.” 

There have been Educational, Literary, and Musi¬ 
cal Congresses; Congresses Scientific, Medical and 
Philosophical; Congresses considering Law and Order, 
Capital and Labor, Moral and Social Reform, House¬ 
hold Economics, and many other subjects. These are 
all of acknowledged importance and have proved emi¬ 
nently successful. But a very large number of people 
all over the world have been looking forward to the 




8 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


various Religious Congresses with surpassing interest, 
as being those which should transcend all others in 
importance—which should include all the good to be 
found in the others, and should anticipate the very 
highest, the most far-reaching and permanent results. 

It has been said that “ the spirit of Missions is not 
simply a phase of Christianity—it is Christianityand 
also that the crowning glory of the nineteenth century 
is the great work that woman is doing for the elevation 
of her own sex. Accepting these propositions as true, 
it is upon this two-fold basis we rest our claim, and 
submit the question whether this Woman’s Congress 
of Christian Missions should not be considered pre¬ 
eminent in importance, and demand the very highest 
consideration and effort. The great Parliament of Reli¬ 
gions, with all its picturesque impressiveness, its schol¬ 
arly addresses, its remarkable magnanimity and toler¬ 
ance, will now belong to history, and generations may 
pass away before its influence will be fully realized. It 
has taught us many lessons. We have been enter¬ 
tained and instructed. 

We recognize much that is beautiful, much that 
is good and true, in the many religions that have been 
so lately represented upon this platform. We see much 
to admire and even to love in their representatives. 
We believe that “ of a truth God is no respecter of 
persons, but in every nation he that feareth God and 
worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.” But we 
also believe that “ God so loved the world that he gave 
his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life.” “ There 
is none other name under heaven given among men, 
whereby we must be saved.” 


INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 


9 


We may see much to admire in the teachings of 
Confucius or of Buddha, and yet we know their names 
“with His great name are no more worthy to keep 
company than the pale fire-fly with the risen sun.” 
And are we not more than ever sure that the much 
boasted “ Light of Asia” is but as the milky way com¬ 
pared with that purer, brighter radiance which ema¬ 
nates from him who hath himself declared, “ I am the 
light of the world ”? 

Therefore it seems most fitting that this great Par¬ 
liament of Religions should be so closely followed by 
this World’s Congress of Missions. As we are made 
more familiar with these blind gropings after truth, as 
we are brought to a keener realization of the universal 
need of mankind, do we not the more fully realize the 
all-sufficient power of the gospel of Christ to supply 
that need? Are we not more than ever grateful for 
our own glorious heritage, and also more than ever 
desirous to shower its blessings over all the earth ? 

We know in whom we have believed, and he hath 
bidden us declare what truth we know. And so may 
this Congress of Missions, whose watchword shall be 
Jesus only, inspire all hearts and minds with fresh 
enthusiasm in his service. May it bring to each of us 
a heightened sense of our own responsibility, and awa¬ 
ken in us new strength and courage for his work. May 
it bring to us a firmer faith, a calm reliance upon “ the 
sure word of prophecy,” and a brighter hope for the 
speedy coming of the time “ when the earth shall be 
filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters 
cover the sea.” 

And amid all the calls that come to us for help, 
above all the voices that cry to us from every land, 


10 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


above the voice of duty itself, may we ever hear the 
voice of Christ in that sweet invitation to nations as 
well as to individuals, “ Come unto me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” 


THE REASON WHY. 

BY MRS. BENJAMIN DOUGLASS. 

“ The Reason Why,” I find assigned on the pro¬ 
gramme as my topic at the opening of “ The World’s 
Congress Auxiliary on Christian Missions.” There is 
a kind of indefinite definiteness about the subject which 
at first seems perplexing. My limits are very strictly 
circumscribed. Had only the little additional letter 
“ s ” been allowed me—“ The Reasons Why ”—I 
should have been entitled to give free rein to fancy 
and speculation, and to present many possible reasons 
for our assembling together, leaving my audience free 
to choose from among them any which they judged 
most adequate. Or had I even been given an indefi¬ 
nite article —“A Reason Why ”—I could have pre¬ 
sented one out of many reasons which might seem 
equally worthy of acceptance. But no such privilege 
is allowed me. I am restricted by a definite article to 
a single reason—“ The Reason Why.” Apparently the 
Committee in charge thought there was but one reason 
worthy of being presented as a sufficient inducement 
for the gathering together of this representative body 
from the East and from the West, from the North and 
from the South. 

If this be so, if but one is necessary, why be 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 


II 


encumbered with many? Where one suffices, more 
are superfluous. I remember that my husband used to 
say years ago, when that great lawyer, Charles O’Con¬ 
or, of New York, had charge of important matters in 
litigation, that his clients, and even his associate coun¬ 
sel, often felt that their case would be surely lost because 
he would concede so much to his opponents—declining 
to contest this or that argument which seemed to him 
immaterial, but that finally, after they had exhausted 
themselves, he would bring forward one vital, funda¬ 
mental point on which he was willing to risk and rest 
the whole case. And well might he do so, for so 
incontrovertible was the argument founded upon it 
that, like a great sledge-hammer, it battered down all 
the enemy’s defences, grinding them to powder, and 
leaving them to be swept away like chaff before the 
whirlwind. One such point was enough. Why em¬ 
barrass the court with a multiplicity of arguments when 
one sufficed ? What need of a fusillade of small arms 
when Long Tom has the range and can cover effec¬ 
tively the entire field ? Why light innumerable tiny 
tapers when through one electric flash “ the night shi- 
neth as the day ” ? 

Need I complain, then, that I am hampered by 
being limited to a single reason? Not if that is one 
which minifies and swallows up all others, a supreme, 
ultimate, comprehensive reason, embracing within its 
scope the whole wide range of earth and heaven, time 
and eternity, God and man. One such reason all 
would be constrained to accept as a sufficient founda¬ 
tion on which to base the whole superstructure of 
Christian Missions and to lead them to build wisely 
and well upon it. What single reason, then, can I pre- 


12 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


sent as entirely adequate for the calling together of this 
great assembly in the highest interests of humanity? 
Could there be one profounder or more sublime, one 
that could more move to vigorous action, than that 
embodied in the song of the heavenly hosts which her¬ 
alded to the congress of shepherds the advent to earth 
of its first great Foreign Missionary: “ Glory to God, 
good will to man ” ? Surely all other reasons for mis¬ 
sion work are subordinate to and summed up in this 
sublime and only reason which brought the Saviour 
from heaven to earth, and which alone can stimulate 
the saved to Christlike service in saving others. God’s 
glory as magnified in good will to man, and man’s 
resulting obligations to God and his fellows, what 
theme is comparable to this for arousing the highest 
thought and enlisting the noblest endeavor? Well 
might the attention of the whole human race be con¬ 
centrated on this one vital point—man’s good, God’s 
glory. 

But am I transcending my limits ? Are not these 
two things distinct and separate ? Nay, verily, they 
are made one through inextricable blending and weav¬ 
ing together, as seven colors blended make but one 
beam of light. They are two halves of a perfect 
whole- twin hemispheres, which, “fitly joined togeth¬ 
er,” make up the whole rounded sphere of love and 
duty. 

But how can one touch on so comprehensive a 
theme in a few brief moments of time? “It is as high 
as heaven—what can one do ? The measure thereof is 
longer than the earth and broader than the sea.” It is 
a soundless depth which no finite intelligence can 
fathom. Yet it is our privilege and our duty rever- 


INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 


13 


ently to look through the glass of revelation and to see 
how the glory of “ Him who is invisible ” shines forth 
preeminently in his wonderful dealings with the human 
race. 

Were God’s glory and his good will to man 
manifested in nature only, it should call forth un¬ 
bounded praise and adoration. Every fruit and flower, 
beast and bird, star and sun, attests the greatness and 
goodness of its Originator. But the creation of ani¬ 
mate or inanimate nature—of an orange, for instance, 
built up mechanically, as it were, into symmetrical sec¬ 
tions, stored with delicious juice, and coated with ham¬ 
mered gold: of a rose, with its graceful form, vivid 
coloring and delicate fragrance ; of a humming-bird, 
gay of plumage and swift of wing; of behemoth and 
leviathan, even of Arcturus and Orion—the creation 
of all these might have been, as it were, the Creator’s 
pastime; but when God made man he gave Himself: 
fashioning him in His own image, not by some external 
manipulation merely, but by the in-breathing of a 
breath of life—the bestowal of a living soul. The 
body, wondrously adapted as it is to the soul’s needs, 
is still but its tent to dwell in, while the soul received 
at its birth the ineffaceable stamp of immortality. Free 
communication with his Maker was also made man’s 
privilege, and no compulsory power could be brought 
to bear on him which would inevitably swerve him 
from his natural relations of love and allegiance. Could 
higher evidence be given than this of God’s “ good will 
to man ” ? Yes; wonderful as this is there are heights 
beyond. Redemption far outranks creation in glory. 
To create was great—to re-create greater. When 
man voluntarily forfeited his God-given privileges, with 


l 4 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


full knowledge of the dread consequences of disobe¬ 
dience, he was helpless to save himself, and none 
“ could by any means redeem his brother or give to 
God a ransom for him.” Eternal loss seemed inevit¬ 
able. But it was the glory of Divinity to come to the 
rescue of humanity. “ Help was laid upon One mighty 
to save.” He who was “the brightness of the Fa¬ 
ther’s glory, the express image of his person,” became 
“ near of kin ” to us. “ Son of God, Son of Mary, Son 
of man ; the generic term,” as one has said, “ including 
the specific as if the blood of the whole human race 
were in his veins.” He, the essential essence of Deity, 
the consummate flower of humanity, voluntarily paid 
the wages of man’s sin,” bearing in his own person 
the full equivalent of the punishment due to the sins 
of a world. Is not this perfect vindication of justice at 
infinite personal cost, this “love beyond all mortal 
thought,” an ideal which unaided imagination could 
never have reached, a conception of which no religion 
but Christianity has given the faintest foreshadowing ? 
Surely such evidence as this of God’s good will to man 
more magnifies his glory than even the heavens de¬ 
clare or the firmament showeth forth. 

“ Its height, its depth, oh, who can span— 

Glory to God and grace to man !” 

But was salvation from eternal loss all that redemp¬ 
tion implied of God’s good will to man ? Ah, there 
are still higher heights beyond our climbing—themes 
passing comprehension: sonship, real and unchal¬ 
lenged ; joint-heirship to an undefiled and incorruptible 
inheritance; partnership, a word we should not dare 
to use did not the inerrant word of inspiration write us 
down “ partakers of the divine natureunification of 


INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 15 

the creature with the Creator: “ unutterable things/’ 
even a glimpse of which by the apostle caught up into 
the third heavens caused him to exclaim, “ Eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart 
of man, the things which God hath prepared for them 
that love him.” 

Is all this glorious vision of the past and the 
future something with which we of the living present 
have nothing to do but to gaze at, appropriate and 
admire ? Have we no part in making known to men, 
the wide world over, the exceeding riches of God’s 
grace ? Ah, God has given added proof of his good 
will to man in permitting his redeemed ones the 
glorious privilege of association with him in the work 
of redemption : “ committing unto their trust the words 
of reconciliation,” commanding them to offer unto all 
nations the glorious gospel of the everlasting God, 
promising them his own peculiar presence in the work, 
and sharing with them his own joy “ in bringing many 
sons to glory.” Co-operation with the King of the 
universe in a work so divine confers a patent of no¬ 
bility on the humblest of his subjects. “ Now then 
are we ambassadors for Christ, as though God did 
beseech you by us ;” we are to pray the world in Christ’s 
stead, “ Be ye reconciled to God.” This bugle-call of 
our great Commander, “ Go, teach all nations,” summons 
to action, continuous action, from the time of his as¬ 
cension to receive the kingdom till he return again to 
claim it. “ But who may abide the day of his coming? 
who shall stand when he appeareth ?” For he shall sit 
as a refiner and purifier of silver and purge away the 
dross of our earthliness and indifference, and our 
wretched shreds of excuses for neglecting to execute 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


1 6 

his great commission will be shrivelled up in the heat 
of his fiery indignation, and if we are saved at all it will 
be so as by fire. 

Assembled, then, as we are to-day, in the name of 
Christ, “looking for the blessed hope and appearing 
of the glory of our great God and Saviour,” it be¬ 
comes us to consider well whether we are one with 
him “whose we are, and whom we ” profess to “ serve,” 
in his great purpose of good will to man. Have we 
proved ourselves to the extent of our ability “ workers 
together with God,” in sending “ good tidings of 
great joy to all people ” ? There should be “ great 
searchings of heart ” in this matter. If we have vir¬ 
tually echoed Cain’s sneer, “ Am I my brother’s 
keeper?” if with that selfishness which is the world’s 
bane we have been content to “ eat the fat and drink 
the sweet ” of the gospel feast, sending no “ portions 
to them for whom nothing is prepared,” we may well 
fear the doom of those who refuse to share their good 
things with others, “ I will even curse your blessings,” 
and that the gifts of God’s bounty of which we make 
our boast be taken from us and “given to a nation 
bringing forth the fruits thereof.” 

Let us, as we sit in Congress assembled, diagnose 
carefully the condition of the church whose well-being 
and extension is our highest aim; and if we find it 
plethoric, congested, frigid or paralytic, let us not 
touch the matter lightly. It demands heroic, not 
superficial treatment. Let us not fear to thrust in the 
probe and let out the venom of selfishness ; to apply 
such stimulants as shall excite its powers to vigorous 
action. Stagnation means death and putrescence. A 
living, healthy church is of necessity an aggressive 


INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. I? 

church. Genuine Christianity is saturated with the 
missionary spirit. It throbs and palpitates with an 
onward movement. It is convinced that its mission is 
the evangelization of the world, and how is it straitened 
till it be accomplished! It hears the pathetic cry of 
the nations, “ Our fathers have inherited vanities and 
lies, things wherein no profit is,” and it hastens to in¬ 
troduce to them the one God and Father of all, and 
to persuade them to turn from idols unto the living 
God and to wait for his Son from heaven. It recognizes 
the truth that “ principalities and powers in the heavenly 
places ” are to learn through the church new lessons 
of the manifold wisdom of God ; and it would not 
keep angelic learners in the lowest form, teaching 
them merely the alphabet of religion, but would de¬ 
monstrate to them the marvellous power of God in 
“ exalting them of low degreein enabling ignorant, 
untutored souls to understand and apply the highest 
science, even “ the dispensation of the mystery which 
from all ages hath been hid in God,” but which is now 
revealed in his “ work for man through man.” 

It becomes us in this Congress of Missions to 
make clearly understood the wide world over that 
the reason for our assembling here is that “ according 
to the riches of God’s glory,” and in furtherance of his 
purposes of good will to man, we, with an unselfishness 
which is his gift, will strive to make all men everywhere 
“ comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and 
length and depth and height, and to know the love of 
Christ, which passeth knowledge,” that they too may 
be “ filled with all the fulness of God.” How can we 
accomplish this gigantic undertaking? This is the 
question of questions for the church of God to-day; 

Woman in Missions. 2 


18 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


not, how can we give all men our civilization, our 
education, our commerce, though all these will follow 
in Christianity’s train, but how can we make known to 
them our Christ ? Never was a time more ripe than 
this for the wide dissemination of gospel truth. “ The 
world is all before us where to choose.” “ Many run 
to and fro and knowledge is increased.” Humanity 
groans under a pressure of intolerable evils. All honor 
to those who in the name of philanthropy attempt to 
mitigate physical ills, who “ stretch out their hands to 
the poor and needy.” But what poverty so great as 
poverty of spirit ? What needs so great as soul needs ? 
By so much as the tenant outranks the tenement, by 
so much as the immortal is beyond that which is per¬ 
ishing, by so much as eternity transcends time, let the 
souls of men have your profoundest interest—your 
most unremitting attention. If convinced that the 
greatest good to the greatest number most greatly 
redounds to the glory of God, then devise the wisest 
methods for reaching the greatest number with the 
highest good in the shortest time. Do n’t waste time 
in answering objections to the cause. We are past that 
age. We have no chair of Apologetics for Missions. 
We are “ elect unto obedience,” and the simple com¬ 
mand of our divine Leader is the only needed spur to 
action. Let love to him be the motive power which 
sets all our machinery in motion, the driving wheel 
which guides it in the right direction. Only an en¬ 
thusiasm for the God-man can produce that “ enthu¬ 
siasm for humanity” which religion is defined to be. 
The love of God which passeth knowledge must be 
shed abroad in the hearts of all who would do success¬ 
ful work for him. Oh, if this Congress of Missions is 


INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 


19 


stirred with a desire for God’s glory and man’s good 
“ as the trees of the wood are stirred by a mighty wind,” 
if hearts here are opened wide to the Holy Spirit and 
he enkindles there a flame of love to God and man, then 
its zeal will stir many. It will prove that it had indeed 
a “ raison d'etre ” and its result will be the inaugura¬ 
tion of such an era of propagandism of the true faith as 
the world has never before known. Let us make it 
our mission to lift before man’s despairing eyes the 
divine Deliverer ; to flash forth that great search¬ 
light, “ the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the face of Jesus Christ,” into the thickest darkness; 
to lay hold with united power on that gospel lever 
which alone can lift up from its depth the black soil 
of humanity into the sweet influences of sun, wind and 
dew, light, love and life as revealed in Father, Son and 
Spirit. So shall the angels’ song at our Lord’s first 
advent, “ Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, 
good will to men,” be gloriously supplemented at his 
triumphal return by the grand choral of “ multitudes 
redeemed unto God out of every kindred, people, 
tongue and nation,” who shall lift up glad voices in 
the new song, 

“ Unto Him that loved us, 

And washed us from our sins in his own blood, 

And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father* 
Be glory and dominion forever and ever.” 


20 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


WOMAN AND THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS. 

WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 

BY MRS. MOSES SMITH. 

For two weeks we have been listening to the 
presentation of religions. We have heard philosophies 
of religion profound and subtle, to some minds fasci¬ 
nating in their grace and mysticism. It may be a 
wholesome, if not so agreeable a thing now to have 
our attention called to the practical workings of some 
of these religions and their effect on the life and destiny 
of man. Moreover, as missionary workers, it is wise 
for us to know not only the present needs of the peo¬ 
ple, but the religious forces which long centuries have 
wrought into every tissue of their thought, feeling and 
action. 

Without question religion is the supreme force in 
history. Religion creates the ideals and aspirations, 
and so chisels the character of mankind. In the order 
of nature the worshipper becomes like the being wor¬ 
shipped. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” 

The world has known many religions, some ol 
them eminent for the tremendous power with which 
they have held millions in their sway over centuries 
of time; eminent also for profound philosophy, lofty 
ideals, and sometimes a high morality. Our Lord 
Jesus Christ gave us the test for himself and his teach¬ 
ing : “ By their fruits ye shall know them.” The con¬ 
ditions of society, temporal and spiritual, are the fruits 
by which any religious system may be known. 


WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 21 


In the nature of things the factor that most univer¬ 
sally moulds society is woman. The boy is father of 
the man, but the woman is mother of the boy; hence 
the study of the teaching of any religion concerning 
woman, and of her character and place in society as 
the result of that religion, is vital both to the correct 
understanding of the system and of what it has wrought 
for the world. 

The most venerable and possibly the most power¬ 
ful ethnic religion is Brahmanism. Rising in India 
when that was the land of literature and art, the home 
of the cultured Aryans, for fifteen centuries this religion 
wrought unhindered on the people. At first a simple 
nature worship, it degenerated into a pantheon in which 
all the powers of nature were gods. On this was built 
a sacerdotalism with caste and idol worship. It be¬ 
came an oppressive tyranny. At this juncture, 500 
years before Christ, a new and forcible factor entered 
the life of the people in the birth of a king’s son, 
Gautama Buddha, known in history as the great re¬ 
former of Brahminism. I have no time to speak of 
the fierce theological war that ensued—for 400 years— 
or of the bright coup d'etat of the Brahmans in final¬ 
ly accepting Buddha as the ninth incarnation of 
Vishnu. 

Each of these systems evinces profound thought 
and lofty ideals, Buddhism a high morality. Each 
contains elements of truth, and each has a tremendous 
power in the history of the race. Striving for suprem¬ 
acy on the same field, the result was a coalition. To¬ 
gether they enter the stream of history under the name 
of Hindooism. The time has been long enough, the 
field favorable and broad enough for the completest 


22 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


results, and the present condition of society affords us 
opportunity to see the results. 

Sir Monier Williams, the distinguished Sanscrit 
scholar of Oxford, says : “Although India in the early 
periods of Brahmanism was a land of literature and 
science, the present characteristics are poverty, ignor¬ 
ance and superstition. Whatever profound thought 
lay about the roots of Hindooism, it held and still holds 
the 280,000,000 of India in the bondage of degradation, 
cruelty and immorality.” “ The average income per 
individual is less than that of any other civilized coun¬ 
try, barely $13 50 per year, against $20 even for the 
Turks, $165 for every Englishman, and $200 for every 
man, woman and child in the United States.”* Dr. 
John Short, Surgeon General of India, long resident 
among the people, says, “ Wherever the Hindoo reli¬ 
gion predominates, there immorality and debauchery 
run riot.” 

The Code of Manu is the highest 

Teachings. • • • ° 

religious authority among the Hindoos. 
You ask a Hindoo about the date and age of his great 
law-giver and he quickly replies, “ He was the son of 
the self-existent Brahm.” Manu’s whole teaching 
about woman is based on the assumption of her impu¬ 
rity. For instance, a Brahman is enjoined “ to suspend 
reading the Veda if a woman come in sight.” Her 
ear is not pure enough to hear what the vilest man may 
read. “ Though unobservant of approved usages, or 
enamoured of another woman, or devoid of good qual¬ 
ities, yet a husband must be revered as a god by a vir¬ 
tuous wife.”f 

“ Let the wife who wishes to perform sacred obla- 
'* Rev. N. G. Clark, D. D. f Dharma Sastra, ch. 3, p. 154. 


WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 23 


Seclusion. 


tion wash the feet of her husband and drink the water, 
for the husband is to the wife greater than Vishnu.” 
Again, “ Women have no business with the text of a 
sacred book, and having no evidence of law, and no 
knowledge of expiatory texts, sinful woman must be 
foul as falsehood itself, and this is a fixed rule.”* And 
it has remained fixed for forty-three centuries. 

The modern Brahmans like to 
claim that the present custom of im¬ 
muring their wives in prison-like rooms had its origin 
in the Mohammedan invasion. This is certainly not 
the whole truth, for in the unalterable law of Manu, 
written 900 years before Christ, we read, “A woman is 
not allowed to go out of the house without the consent 
of her husband, she may not laugh without a veil over 
her face or look out of a door or a window.” “ It may 
be that when the Mohammedans came, some fifteen 
centuries after these laws had been in force, they put 
the crown on the arch already waiting for them. They 
may have tightened the chains by which woman was 
already enslaved,”f but the teachings of Manu are suf¬ 
ficient to account for all we see in India to-day. 

The people of the Western World 
have long wondered why the Hindoos 
were so tenacious of their, to us, revolting custom of 
child marriage. It is only when we learn that it is not 
simply a custom but a part of their religion that we 
apprehend the reason. The sacred laws of the Hindoo 
declare, “ If a daughter is married at the age of six 
the father is certain to ascend to the highest heaven. 
If the daughter is not married before seven the father 

* Dharma Sastra, chap. 5, pages 155, 156. 
f Wilkin’s “ Modern Hindooism,” page 326. 


Child Marriage. 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


24 

will only reach the second heaven. If a daughter is 
not married until the age of ten the father can only 
attain the lowest place assigned the blessed. If a girl 
is not married until she is eleven years of age all her 
progenitors for six generations will suffer pains and 
penalties.”* When recently an effort was made to 
induce the Government to raise the legal age of mar¬ 
riage to twelve years, great excitement prevailed. The 
Brahmans set apart days of fasting and prayer. Multi¬ 
tudes came in processions to the temples, in some cases 
beating their breasts and calling aloud to the gods to 
spare them from such calamity. 

The worst feature of the system of child marriage 
is seen among the Kulin Brahmans, the highest of all. 
Girls in these families must not marry into a lower 
caste, and the supply of Kulins is limited, so fathers 
who have not money to induce some young men to 
marry their daughters are compelled to give their 
little girls to those who make a living by being hus¬ 
bands. Thus a child of twelve may be given as the 
fortieth or fiftieth wife of some old man. Although it 
is certain she will soon be a widow, even that is prefer¬ 
able to allowing her to remain unmarried. 

Infanticide. “ The C ° de ° f Manu forbids a 

woman to read the scripture or offer 
prayer by herself. She is to have no individuality. 
She exists only in her father or her husband: without 
a husband she is soulless.” This doctrine bears its 
legitimate fruit in the custom of murdering infant girls. 
It is easy reasoning that it is better to murder a soul¬ 
less child than not to be able to betroth her, and so 
bring disgrace on the whole family. 

* “ Women of the Orient,” page 135. 


WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 25 
“ The Hindoo sacred books reach 

Widows. , . . . . . , 

their climax of cruelty in the require¬ 
ments concerning the widow. She may have been 
only a betrothed infant or a child of a few years. It 
makes no difference.” The Shasters teach that if the 
widow burns herself alive on the funeral pile of her 
husband, even though he had killed a Brahman, that 
most heinous of deeds, she expiates the crime. For 
long centuries widows have been a literal burnt offer¬ 
ing for the redemption of husbands. The English 
Government has prohibited the suttee, but, being con¬ 
sidered by the family as one rejected of the gods, the 
widow’s life is such a degradation, such a sorrow, it 
would seem merciful to let her die. Manu wrote, “ Let 
not a widow ever pronounce the name of another man, 
for by remarriage she brings disgrace on herself here 
below, and shall be excluded from the seat of her 
Lord.” To-day in India under the Hindoo religion the 
widow may not take food more than once in the day. 
She must go without food and water for forty-eight 
hours twice in the month. At a meeting of the highest 
religious court a few years ago it was gravely decreed 
that if, acting on medical advice, a widow did some¬ 
times take a little water on fast day, the offence might 
be condoned. Oh the burning pathos of the Hindoo 
widow’s prayer : “ O God, let no more women be born 
in this land!” India has now 21,000,000 of widows, 
nearly 100,000 of them under nine years. 

Hindooism touches its lowest 

The Nautch Girl. .... . . . r 

depths in the degradation of woman 
in what the enlightened Hindoo, Mr. Mozoomdar, 
called in the Parliament of Religions “consecrated 
prostitution ” of the Nautch or dancing girls in the 


26 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


temples. The subject is too delicate and too horrible 
for me to speak of in detail, but as it is a much 
honored part of this religion it cannot be omitted. 
The Brahmans claim that it is a most sacred service, 
having its origin in prehistoric ages in a promise made 
by Vishnu himself. In a few words the reason and 
method is this: Parents who have a son very ill will 
vow to some god that if the son’s life is spared they will 
consecrate a little girl to the temple; or the parents, be¬ 
lieving that honor or wealth will be the result, conse¬ 
crate a girl to the god ; or the Brahmans select the most 
beautiful little girls, the parents rejoicing in the relig¬ 
ious honor. 

From the hour of consecration the little thing is 
treated with peculiar respect. She alone of the girls of 
the family is taught to read. When she becomes ten 
or twelve years old, her father, mother and nearest 
relatives take her to the great temple. They go with 
the priest into the inner shrine. The girl places her 
hand in the idol’s hand, the priest repeats certain 
prayers and charms. He then hangs a wreath of cow¬ 
rie shells around the girl’s neck and the poor little 
thing repeats after him her marriage vow, which vow is 
to prostitute herself to any pilgrim to the shrine who 
demands it.* The position of these religious prostitutes 
in Hindoo society is so highly respectable that no festi¬ 
val or wedding is celebrated without their presence. 
They are asked to tie the wifely ornaments on the neck 
of the bride. They, being married to a god, can never 
be widowed, and their touch is lucky. In elegant attire, 
with costly jewels and perfumes, charmingly graceful, 
they lead their wretched lives, bring great sums into the 
* Prof. T. M. Lindsay, University of Glasgow. 


WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 27 

treasury of the temple, and, as they are religiously 
taught, accumulate a store of blessing for themselves in 
a future state. John Short, M. D., Surgeon General of 
India, Member of the Anthropological Society, London, 
says : “ The Nautch girl is recognized and patronized 
by the Hindoo religion.” 

There was a time in the fair eastern land when 
women were in a position of respect similar to that 
among the ancient Hebrews. Husband and wife were 
equal in all domestic, social and religious life. “ The 
Brahmins have themselves preserved the record of wo¬ 
men engaging in philosophical discussions, and discon¬ 
certing their most celebrated doctors by the depths of 
their objections.”* Some of the Vedic hymns were 
composed by women. By degrees the condition of wo¬ 
man has deteriorated until by the law of their religion 
she is “ now consigned to degradation probably without 
a parallel in the history of the race.” It is true, Buddha, 
in the sixth century before Christ, taught that men and 
women were equal, but even his influence has never 
been strong enough to reform the Brahminical laws 
about women. The Hindoos have a saying : “ Educa¬ 
tion is good, as milk is good, but milk given to a snake 
becomes venom, and education given to a woman be¬ 
comes poison.” 

A quotation from the personal experience of Prof. 
T. M. Lindsay, D. D., so pertinently sums up the Hin¬ 
doo creed about women that I quote it. “ I remember 
asking a learned Vedantist, who had spent two days in 
teaching me something about his beliefs—a man who 
had read Spinoza, Berkeley and Hegel—whether he 
could give me any definite proposition which all the 
* J, Murray Mitchell, LL. D. 


28 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


Religions of 
China. 


people who were Hindoos could accept. He very 
readily said, ‘ That woman is a wicked animal. That 
the cow is a holy animal.’ ” No brilliant presentation 
of Vedic learning, no poetic picture of Brahmin or 
Buddhist philosophy so recently heard in the Parlia¬ 
ment of Religions, will prevent the world from arraign¬ 
ing Hindooism for cherishing, in the sacred name of 
religion, the grossest vices, and basely degrading wo¬ 
man and all society. “ By their fruit ye shall know 
them.” 

In the Empire ot China, under a 
government distinguished for its stabil¬ 
ity and justness, among a people spoken of before 
Christ as “ those who dwell apart,’ and known from 
the time of Ptolemy as just, mild, frugal and industri¬ 
ous, comprising one-fourth the human race, three 
religions of confessed power, not as rivals but as coor¬ 
dinate and supplemental, have for many centuries sought 
to solve the problem of life, death and immortality. 
The time has been long enough, the conditions favor¬ 
able for a perfect experiment. Confucianism, the oldest 
of the three, gave what is probably the best code of 
morals man ever gave to men. Confucius was himself 
an earnest reformer. Dr. Legge, professor of Chinese 
in the University of Oxford, says : “ Confucius saw the 
terrible wretchedness of his people and set himself to 
find a remedy. Yet to the one principal cause of the 
misery of the masses, polygamy and the low social con¬ 
dition of woman, he gave no thought.” In his treatise 
on human relations, in that of husband and wife, he re¬ 
gards the wife as the servant of the husband and enjoins 
absolute obedience. During all these forty-three cen¬ 
turies, while Confucius has done much for good gov- 


WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 29 

ernment and has set some high moral standards for 
men, women have reaped no benefit from the teachings 
of the sage. 

Taoism Lao-tsze, the founder of Taoism, a 

religion of no little power in China, 
made no effort to elevate the people, and his religious 
system does not recognize the existence of woman. In 
the beginning the work of Taoism was to repress the 
passions. 

“Not to act is the source ol all power,”* was an 
ever present thesis. To-day Taoism is a system of 
magic and spiritism. 

Buddhism. Much vaunted “gentle Buddha” 

gives to the women of China one only 
hope. Through the doctrine of transmigration of souls 
it is possible that through obedience to her husband 
and his relatives and the birth of a son she may in 
some future aeon have the happiness of being returned 
to this world a man. If a man commits crime he may 
be returned to earth a woman. The one fervent prayer 
of the women as they crowd the Buddhist temples is 
that they may be returned to earth as men. When the 
women apply to the priests for instruction they are told, 
“ When you die your soul will pass into the land of spirits, 
where it may remain ages before it is allowed to return 
to earth and inhabit the body of a man. You will need 
money to pay toll on the bridges, and you must fee the 
ferrymen, especially on the lily boat to cross the lake of 
blood.”f (This fee is $30.) The priests claim to have 
opened communication with the spirit land and their 
drafts are honored there. In one part of the temple 
* Ten Great Religions. Janies Freeman Clark, 
f China and the Chinese. Rev. J. L. Nevius. 


30 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


these drafts are sold, the priests placing the seal of the 
temple on them. Of the $400,000,000 annually given 
for idol worship in China at least seven-eighths is given 
by women, and three-fourths of that by women too poor 
to obtain enough of even the coarsest food. 

The customs and principles of 

Marriage. . - - 

marriage among any people are the ex¬ 
ponents of woman’s place in the social scale. Chinese 
women are bought and sold in marriage. The wife is 
for ever subject to the husband and his parents; only 
when she becomes the mother of sons does she receive 
the respect of the family. Divorce is practically at the 
pleasure of the husband, or he may sell her to another 
man. Undesired at birth, liable to be sold while a child 
for prostitution, never educated, her low estate naturally 
leads to the crime of infanticide. Little wonder that 
they innocently ask, “ Why save the life of a girl?” 

What to-day is the place of this vast Empire among 
the nations ? The combined force of these three reli¬ 
gions, working for twenty-three centuries upon one- 
fourth of the human race, has shed no light on the two 
great foci, the family into which every human being is 
born and that immortality to which every human soul 
aspires, nor has any single ray of light emanated for 
the enlightenment of the other three-fourths of man¬ 
kind. Alas! a nation cannot rise higher than its mo¬ 
thers. 

Mohammed- There are few more pathetic scenes 

amsm. j n hj s t or y than the casting out of Ha- 
gar and Ishmael from the polygamous home of Abra¬ 
ham. “ Abraham rose up early in the morning and 
took bread and a bottle of water ” and gave it unto 
Hagar and her child “ and sent them away.” The pic- 


WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 3 1 

ture is realistic : that erect, well-poised figure with the 
bottle on her shoulder, that dark Egyptian face with 
chiseled lines of sorrow illuminated now with righteous 
anger, as she gives one last haughty look towards 
Sarah’s tent and turns towards the wilderness of Beer- 
sheba. Very soon the curtain lifts upon the desert 
scene. The water is spent. Hagar places the child 
under the scant shade of a shrub, and lifting up her 
voice, weeping, cries out, “ Let me not see the death of 
the child.” At this crisis a voice is heard from heaven: 
“ Lift up the lad. I will make of him a great nation.” 
And they dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and his mo¬ 
ther took him a wife out of the land of the Egyptians. 

The years go by and centuries are numbered. 
We find the fulfilled promise of a “ great nation ” in a 
people in whose veins on the one side is filtering the 
blood j of the great Abraham mingling with the larger 
proportion of the idolatrous Egyptian, nomadic in 
habit, with a genius for conquest, with a language dis¬ 
tinguished for softness and copiousness, with a litera¬ 
ture of great antiquity and high poetical merit, dwelling 
in the Peninsula of Arabia. Of these people, in the 
fifth century of the Christian era, Mohammed, the 
founder of Islam, was born. A youth of great sincerity 
and purity, his domestic life with his wife, Khadija, is 
as beautiful as could be found among a non-Christian 
people. But when at the age of fifty-two he sets him¬ 
self up as a prophet, and becomes the husband of eleven 
wives, we find him guilty of the grossest crimes, rob¬ 
bery, murder and butchery which rival the Emperor 
Nero. 

“Judged by the smallness of the means at his dis¬ 
posal, and the extent and permanence of his work, his 


32 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


name is illustrious. By his will he abolished a cher¬ 
ished idolatry and bowed to himself the hearts of his 
countrymen, and gave to the world a creed which has 
been a tremendous force in the destinies of the nations. 
To the impulse he gave, numberless dynasties owe their 
existence. Fair cities, stately palaces and temples have 
arisen. At a thousand shrines the voices of the faithful 
invoke blessings on him.”* “ He saw with a correct 
spiritual vision the elemental truth of all religion: 
There is only one God.”f For twelve centuries the 
teachings of Mohammed have borne fruit in human 
lives; not only in the land of its birth, but in many 
lands. 

We turn the pages of the Koran 
with eager hope that we may find in the 
writings of this man some teaching that shall lead to the 
uplifting of woman. The most hopeful word the Koran 
has for woman is in the second chapter: “ Whoso 
doeth good works and is a believer, whether male or 
female, shall be admitted to Paradise.” The practical 
exegesis of a woman’s “ good works ” is obedience to 
the husband. Without that good work she cannot 
enter Paradise. Again, in the fourth chapter, entitled 
“ Women,” we read, “ Men shall have pre-eminence 
above women, because of those advantages wherein God 
hath caused the one to excel the other, and for that 
which they expend of their substance in maintaining 
their wives. The honest women are obedient, careful in 
the absence of their husbands, for that God preserveth 
them by committing them to the care and protection of 
the men. But those whose perverseness ye shall be 
apprehensive of, rebuke, and remove them into separate 
* Marcus Dodd. f Dean Mill man. 


WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 33 


Divorce. 


apartments and chastise them.” The degraded and 
degrading practice of scourging and beating wives, 
having the sanction of the Koran, will be, in the words 
of Dr. Jessup, “ indulged in so long as Islam as a faith 
prevails.” 

Polygamy Note the polygamous teaching of 

the Koran. “ Every Moslem is allowed 
four free wives and as many concubines as his right 
hand possess;” and the faithful are positively promised 
that in Paradise they shall have seventy-two houries for 
wives, besides the wives they have here. 

According to the Koran, the hus¬ 
band may divorce a wife without warn¬ 
ing or assigning a reason. The husband has only to 
say, “ Thou art divorced.” Even life may be taken at 
the will of the husband. Woman is practically a chat¬ 
tel. A Mohammedan being asked, “ What is the price 
you pay for a good wife ?” replied, “About the same as 
for a mule, twelve or fourteen pounds.” 

A polite Mohammedan would not 
speak of his wife without using the same 
apologetic formula he would use if he was speaking ol 
a donkey or a hog. Indeed, so degrading is the ortho¬ 
dox Mohammedan’s idea of womanhood we cannot 
mention it here. The Koran says nothing about a 
woman’s praying, therefore she is excluded from the 
Mosques at the hours of prayer. Behold a religion 
that practically excludes one-half the human race! It 
was not until Mohammed was fifty-eight years of age, 
and the husband of many wives, and had under his own 
roof experienced what the Moslem women of to-day 
declare—when there is more than one wife “ there is fire 
in the house ’’—that he wrote in the Koran the “ ordi- 
3 


Estimate. 


Woman in Mission*. 


34 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


nance of veil”—that badge of jealous subjugation which 
marks an era in the degradation of women in all the 
Orient. The regulation costume shrouds the woman 
from the head to the ankle in a cotton or silk sheet of 
black or white. Around the head is tied a yard-long 
linen or cotton veil in which before the eyes is a piece 
of open-work, about the size of a finger, which is the 
only look-out and ventilator. No part, not even a 
hand or an eye, can be seen. 

See the picture: with fearful footsteps, with no 
hope in man, with little knowledge of the “All-Father,” 
with no knowledge of Him who said, “ Come unto me, 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” for twelve 
cycling centuries an unceasing ghostly procession has 
marched from birth to death. 

Theckla, a Christian martyr of the first century, 
standing in the arena at Antioch, bemoans in her 
prayer the shame of all women in her unclothing. The 
clothing of women in the veil of the false prophet is 
a shame to all womanhood. “ The whole life of a Mo¬ 
hammedan woman is mirrored in that pathetic Arabic 
proverb, ‘ The threshold weeps for forty days whenever 
a girl is born.’” The spider’s web which once saved 
the life of Mohammed has, as by the hand of a Vulcan, 
been forged into a chain which in this nineteenth cen¬ 
tury in the name of religion dares hold woman, and 
through her 200,000,000 of mankind, in a singularly 
hopeless degradation. 

Shintoism, the religion of Japan from time imme¬ 
morial, and Buddhism, introduced in 552 of the Chris¬ 
tian era, have wrought these many centuries in the 
Mikado’s Empire. While women in Japan are not so 
pitiably degraded as in India or China, we read in their 


WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 35 

book of “Instruction for Women,” “Woman is the 
creature of man.” “ A woman’s husband is her God.” 
Concubinage, “ divorce, if the wife is not obedient to her 
husband’s parents ” or is unkind to a concubine, and the 
selling of young daughters for prostitution tell the story. 

Among the Ainos, the aboriginal inhabitants of 
the island of Yesso, the women do not worship the gods, 
even separately. “ The reason commonly given among 
them is that the men fear the prayers of the women in 
general, and of their wives in particular.”* 

The sacred books of Zoroaster give women a 
higher place than any other Ethnic religion. Women 
are given the same religious rites as men; yet even here 
“ woman’s first duty is obedience to her husband, and 
disobedience is a crime so heinous as to receive punish¬ 
ment after death.”f 

On the death of a chief in Central Africa hundreds 
of his wives are buried alive,J a sacrifice for his conve¬ 
nience in the spirit land. 

Miss Mary C. Collins, who has lived many years 
among the North American Indians, says, “ The Indian 
is a religious man, and it is his religion that makes him 
cruel.” 

The story becomes monotonous. All non-Chris¬ 
tian religions degrade women, and as woman is so is 
all society. To-day the all-sufficient Christian evi¬ 
dence is the immeasurable contrast between heathen 
and Christian society. 

“ The works that I do bear witness of Me, 
THAT THE FATHER HATH SENT Me.” John 5 : 36. 

* Rev. John Bachelor, Church Missionary Society, 
f The Vendidas. t Cameron. 


3 6 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


WOMAN UNDER THE JEWISH AND 
CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 

ELIZABETH RUNDLE CHARLES. 

(All rights reserved to the Author.) 

It is with the deepest interest and the keenest 
sympathy that I respond to the request of my sisters 
across the sea to say a few words to the great Con¬ 
vention of Women from both sides of the sea on the 
subject of “Woman under the Jewish and Christian 
Religions.” 

The subject naturally divides itself into the ideal 
set before us in those religions, and the biography and 
history in which that ideal is carried out. Our chief 
sources of information must be those two great ancient 
literatures (written in two languages that have never 
been dead—still, in a sense, spoken by two living 
nations) which we bind up together and call one book, 
“ The Bookand not falsely, because the unity of the 
divine manifestation is as evident throughout the whole 
as the variety in the evolutions of human history 
through which this divine manifestation shines. 

And throughout these varied literatures—this one 
Book—nothing seems more penetrating and lucid than 
the connection between the relation of God to man and 
the relation of man to woman. 

We will begin at the beginning, going back be¬ 
fore the differentiation of the human race into nations, 


UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 37 

before the origin of the Jewish people, before the books 
of the generations of Abraham or Noah. 

Most significant it is that this ancient literature of 
the most exclusive of nations begins not with Abraham 
but with Adam: with man as man ; with the common 
origin of the whole race. The “ Gentile ”—who, how¬ 
ever great and good and wise and devout, was never, 
on pain of death, to pass the barrier in the temple 
which the humblest Jewish woman might penetrate—is 
declared to have been originally created “ in the image 
and likeness of God;” taken from the same dust, in¬ 
spired with the same breath of life, as any Hebrew of 
the Hebrews. Before all the variations, unity : “ In the 
beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” In 
the beginning “ God created man in his own image. 
In the image of God created he him; male and female 
(man and woman) created he them.” 

In these magnificent, simple words we have the 
fullest natural theology, the clearest divine anthropol¬ 
ogy. God and nature, God and man. The divine 
personality of the Creator infinitely and eternally dis¬ 
tinct from the creature; no mere vague interfusion or 
counteraction of spirit and matter. Not between 
spirit and matter is the contrast, but between the su¬ 
preme personality and things. And, very significantly, 
the first creature mentioned is light; the light which 
in her latest word science can as little define as she can 
define spirit; not long since written of as a substance, 
now scarcely even as a force; an emanation, a vibra¬ 
tion, an undulation, a mode of motion, but an emana¬ 
tion from what, an undulation of what, none can say; 
something which we cannot in itself see or perceive, yet 
without which we can perceive nothing. 


38 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


“ Thus the story of the material creation, the universe 
of things, begins with mystery, as well as the story of 
the spiritual universe, the world of persons. Light 
dawns on us as indefinable, as undeniable, as life, as 
the living soul, the personality created in the image of 
God. 

Next, as to the creation of man, this ancient record 
states his composite nature: dust and life; the body 
and the living soul. And then, entangling itself in no 
psychological theories, leaving the fact of the interfus¬ 
ing of dust and life and soul as it leaves the fact of 
light, it advances in the differentiation to the his¬ 
tory : “ Male and female (man and woman) created he 
them.” 

With the existence of man, the creation of a human 
personality in the image of God, a new significance 
comes into nature. It becomes a “garden ” in relation 
with man, to “ be dressed and kept.” It has food to 
nourish his earthly life ; things “ good for food.” It 
has beauty to nourish his spirit, “ pleasant to the eyes.” 
And now also moral life, right and wrong enter the 
world: will and choice; obedience, only conceivable 
when disobedience is possible; “thou shalt, and thou 
shalt not,” the “ tree of the knowledge of good and 
evil.” Beauty, goodness, truth, meaning, purpose, 
come into everything. 

The beasts and the birds are brought by God to 
man (in the delightful grand old childlike story) “ to 
see what he will call them,” and “ whatever he calls 
every living creature that is the name thereof.” Com¬ 
prehension, comparison, sympathy are in this new 
creature in the likeness of God, for all the rest of the 
creatures. And yet, amongst them all, he stands 


UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 39 

alone: none of them, try as the kindest and the clever¬ 
est of them might, could comprehend him. With all 
their beauty and grace, the music of their songs, the 
skill of their architecture, their delight in each other, 
their serviceableness to him, there was none who could 
respond to man. He could name them, but they 
could not name him. “ For Adam was no help meet 
found.” Then, out of man, God “ builded ” woman, 
and brought her unto the man ; and human history 
began. 

The help meet is found. The chord of the true 
relation between man and woman, man and wife, the 
fountain of all other human relations, rings out clear 
and full from the beginning. “ Helpthe word is a 
high word, continually used for the help of God ; no 
mere echo or repetition, or feeble supplement: “ help 
over against him.” She stands before him face to face, 
side by side. 

“ Not undeveloped man, but diverse ; 

Not like to like, but like in difference. 

The woman’s cause is man’s. They rise and sink 
Together, dwarfed or Godlike, bond or free.” 

True and full the perfect chord rings out from the 
beginning. 

The woman is brought to the man, and then, 
too soon, the grand choral harmony breaks into dis¬ 
cord. 

The creature doubts the Creator. The fallen wo¬ 
man, from the helper, becomes the tempter. The fallen 
man becomes the accuser, excusing himself and re¬ 
proaching the Giver with his gift: “ The woman thou 
gavest to be with me gave me of the tree.” The 
Paradise is exchanged for the wilderness, the joyful 


40 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


fellow-working- in the garden becomes the toiling in 
the wilderness, the battling with thistles and thorns. 

What is allegory and what prose in the grand old 
story may be debated for ever. The fact remains, with 
all the history and philosophy, theology and anthro¬ 
pology folded up iri it: man and woman rise and fall 
together. The fact remains that out of his toil comes 
the restoration of man; out of her suffering comes the 
redemption of the race. 

In the wilderness begins the Family. By the 
woman, ages after, the promised man, bruising the 
enemy’s head, is “ gotten from the Lordthe perfect 
ideal of humanity is at last realized. 

In the infinite tenderness of the divine story, in 
the infinite resources of divine redemption, it is a 
woman’s voice that breaks the echo of the long and 
bitter cry of revolt and ruin. Mary’s “ Be it unto me 
according to thy word ” resolves at last the discord of 
the serpent’s “ Hath God said ?” 

And the perfect man, the “ second man,” the Lord 
from heaven, amidst so many other redemptions and 
renewals reasserts the original law of the creation. 
“ Have ye not read that He which made them at the 
beginning made them male and female?” man and 
woman; renewing also the sacred original law of 
marriage in the words of welcome of the first man to 
the first woman, the first husband to the first wife: 
“ For this cause shall a man leave his father and his 
mother and cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall 
be one flesh.” 

“ And so these twain, upon the skirts of time, 

Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, 

Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 


UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 41 

Self reverent each and reverencing each, 

Distinct in individualities, 

But like each other even as those who love. 

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men; 

Then reign the world’s great bridals chaste and calm; 

Then springs the crowning race of human kind.”* 

The early harmony is found again (chastened and 
enriched by the discords that have intervened) through 
the life of perfect service and the death of supreme 
self-sacrifice, which in glorifying all service and in¬ 
spiring all sacrifice have glorified and inspired as never 
before her whose normal life is essentially service and 
sacrifice; and, through womanhood, all humanity. 

But between Eve and Mary conies the great He¬ 
brew literature, the story of the family of Abraham 
and the nation of Israel; and rarely indeed is the lost 
chord of the first ideal struck again. 

The women mentioned in the patriarchal story 
are certainly far from ideal or exemplary. The great 
original law of marriage, fidelity as absolute for man 
as for woman, is lost in a tangle of temporary or 
polygamous connections, with the inevitable result of 
life lowered in all its relations; strifes, wrongs, jealous¬ 
ies, resentments. The equal help, the ennobling com¬ 
panionship, the one sacred uniting love vanish in the 
mere desire for the perpetuation in one way or other 
of the family, the stock. And with the degradation of 
marriage, sacred source and bond of all other relations, 
all other relations are tangled and ruined. 

When we come to the nation there are indeed 
some names of women that shine out nobly. I11 all 
histories, unfortunately, it is not usually the best wo¬ 
men whose names have the widest echo. Andromache’s 
* Tennyson’s Princess. 


42 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


tender story does not resound through the world like 
that of Helen of Troy. 

But in the Jewish history there are three names 
that ring out with trumpet tones : Miriam, Deborah and 
Esther; and there are two others, Hannah and Ruth, 
that penetrate the din of strife with sweet low music of 
love and peace. 

Miriam, Deborah, Esther; great national heroines, 
two of them also poets or prophetesses. The first 
linked with the birthday of the nation after the tri¬ 
umphant crossing of the Red Sea; the second with the 
fierce conflicts of the conquest; the third with the op¬ 
pressions and deliverances of the Captivity. 

The first glimpse we have of Miriam is as the 
young sister, faithfully watching the baby brother in 
the bulrush cradle by the river, with ready wit and 
fine courage coming forward to the princess to fetch 
her mother to nurse the child. 

Through the youth of Moses at the court, and 
the forty years in the wilderness, and the long struggle 
with Pharaoh for the liberation of the people, we hear 
nothing more of her. But when the Egyptian host 
is overthrown, and the sea is passed, then on the 
Arabian shore Miriam once more appears; the long, 
faithful waiting ends in the triumphant battle song as 
she sounds the timbrel and leads the choral dance, and 
strikes the exultant antiphon, “ Sing ye to the Lord, 
for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his 
rider hath he thrown into the sea.” 

Not that her faith was always above desponding 
or murmuring in the weary repetitions of the trials of 
the long wilderness journey; but the echo of those 
murmurs is drowned in the national memory by the 


UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 43 

faithful watching of the young sister and the triumph¬ 
ant song of the aged prophetess. To the last days of 
the existence of her people in their own land an 
annual festival was held in honor of Miriam, sister of 
Moses and prophetess of Israel. 

Deborah stands before us more detached and more 
original. Not the courage of the men of her race, but 
the failure of their courage, seems to have enkindled 
the patriotism which made her a prophetess, a leader 
and a judge. 

The wife of Lapidoth, to her, under the palm tree, 
the people came as their judge, acknowledging in her 
the judicial office, in general opinion least adapted to 
a woman. No hereditary princess or queen, but one 
of the judges—the office in all history least official—by 
divine right of capability and by the response of the 
heart and judgment of the people. 

Like Joan of Arc, Deborah’s patriotism had its 
roots in pity. The highways, as we learn from her 
song, were desolate for fear of the invader; the cowed 
and harassed people crept through hidden by-paths; 
the villages were deserted; by the village wells, at the 
drawing of water, the maidens were hunted down by 
the marauders, and “ not a shield or spear was found ” 
to defend them “ among the forty thousand in Israel,” 
until Deborah arose, “ a mother in Israel,” strong in her 
motherly pity to protect the weak, strong in her faith 
in the God of her fathers, which for a time the men of 
her race seemed to have lost; having chosen instead 
“new gods,” the gods of the conquerers, from whom 
no inspiration and no organization could come. 

Love was her inspiration, the pity of her motherly 
heart; love to the Eternal and Almighty, infinite be- 


44 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


yond all thought, closer to his people than any of the 
captains or judges he might send. Her faith and 
indignant pity aroused the enfeebled wills and enkindled 
the smouldering faith of her people. The “ princes 
offered themselves willingly.” Once more the scattered 
families, the divided tribes, rose to feel themselves a 
nation. She found a leader in Barak ; but evidently, to 
the end, the inspiration and the organization of nation 
and army were from her. Without her Barak could 
not plan a campaign; would not go forth to the battle. 
She led them up to the heights, she sent them down at 
the right moment to the plains to encounter the nine 
hundred chariots of Sisera. The foe fled, were cut 
down by the pursuers, swept away by the flooded 
Kishon, till none was left save Sisera fleeing desperate¬ 
ly to the Kenite tent to be slain there by the hand of 
another woman. 

Then arose from Deborah’s lips the song of vic¬ 
tory ; not a mere response, as with Miriam, but a grand 
choral patriotic battle-song, sung in responses from 
men to maidens, from tribe to tribe; a hymn of praise 
for the families returning in peace to their homes, for 
the nation returning to the eternal God of their fathers. 

The last strophe of the song reveals the source of 
Deborah’s strength, beneath the motherly pity, beneath 
the 'fiery patriotism : “ They that love Him shall be as 
the sun as he goeth forth in his strength.” Loving 
him, the Eternal, the God of her fathers, that brave 
woman had shone forth on her people “ as the sun in 
his strength.” The clouds and storms were scattered. 
And the land had rest forty years. 

Then comes an era of national splendor. The 
judges under the oaks or the palm-tree are succeeded 


UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 45 

by kings reigning in great cities, with palaces as mag¬ 
nificent as those of the kings of the nations around. 
Instead of the curtained tabernacle on the hillside arose 
the temple, with its cloisters and courts crowning the 
heights of Jerusalem. 

And then division of the nation, degradation of the 
worship, faithlessness in the family life, faithlessness of 
the nation pledged to its God; the temple destroyed, 
the city ruined, the whole nation scattered hither and 
thither; exiled and captive, yet again and again by the 
power inherent in the faith, by the buoyancy innate in 
the race, rising to high places among their oppressors. 
Recovering, and beaten back, successful, and hated, as 
so often in that wonderful Jewish story, until another 
great national peril called forth another great national 
heroine: Esther, the queen, risking death for her people 
in the palace of her husband, King Ahasuerus, the 
Xerxes of the Greek war.* 

From her lips no prophetic hymn, no victorious 
battle-song comes down to us, but imperishable, simple 
words of self-sacrifice far greater than these: “ If I per¬ 
ish, I perish.” Not in the excitement of the battle-field, 
yet brave as Leonidas at Marathon, in the home, in 
the palace chamber she encountered the deadly peril 
alone, and won the day, and saved her people from 
destruction. And for thousands of years, through the 
Captivity and Return, and the long Dispersion of the 
ages since, her people have kept the festival of the 
deliverance she had wrought. 

Lofty and varied are the gifts recognized and the 
services rendered by these three: prophecy, poetry, 
faculty to rule, to judge and to organize, courage to 
* Dean Stanley, “Jewish Church.” 


46 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


sustain a nation that had lost its courage, faith to revive 
the faith in which the nation had failed, heroism to 
brave a despot alone, unaided. 

What then is the moral ideal upheld in these three ? 
An exalted faith in God, self-sacrifice for Israel— 
for the nation; pity, courage, constancy. Beyond the 
nation, and the boundless devotion due to it, there were 
enemies to whom no pity was due : horse and rider 
were overwhelmed in the sea, or swept away by the 
river Kishon, the fugitive was murdered sleeping in 
the tent by the hostess who had welcomed him, the 
Persian foes were massacred ruthlessly with the per¬ 
mission of Ahasuerus (as they would doubtless have 
ruthlessly massacred the Jews), a whole family was 
hanged on the gallows sixty feet high prepared by 
their father for the queen’s uncle. 

For Israel there was devotion without bounds; 
for those outside Israel, or hostile to Israel, no touch 
of mercy. The way is far between this and Joan of 
Arc pausing in pursuit of the enemy and dismounting 
to rest the head of a dying foe on her knee. 

With Ruth and Hannah we come to a different 
strain. These pathetic stories give us glimpses into the 
depths of the common human life flowing beneath the 
conflicts of races and religions. 

The story of Ruth the Moabitess blossoms like a 
fragrant flower amid the stony desert of strife. It is 
good to think of her name in the genealogy of Jesus, 
Son of David, Son of Mary, Son of man. In all history 
there is not a tenderer story than this of the young 
widowed woman cleaving to her husband’s widowed 
mother, sharing her poverty and bereavement, embra¬ 
cing her faith, and going back to sustain the desolate 


UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 47 


heart in the old home among a race she had never 
known. Ruth is not ranked among the sweet singers 
of Israel, yet no sweeter music has come down to us 
from the past than her tender words, “ Entreat me not 
to leave thee, nor to return from following after thee. 
Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I 
will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy 
God my God.” 

And again, Hannah, poet and prophetess through 
a mother’s love and joy, sending her son’s birthday 
song through the ages till its notes blend as a tender 
prelude with the Magnificat of Mary, the blessed mother 
of Jesus. And so the Jewish story passes on through 
storm and sunshine, day and night, to its fulfilment. 

Throughout the centuries the ancient ritual had 
borne witness to the holiness of God and to the separa¬ 
ting, desecrating nature of sin. From age to age the 
Jewish prophets had proclaimed the infinity and omni¬ 
potence of God in comparison with man—“all the in¬ 
habitants of the earth as grasshoppers before him 
and also, at the same time, the opposite truth, of the 
close union of God with man, the marriage of the Eter¬ 
nal to the chosen nation, which made idolatry, with 
them, as the infidelity of a wife. And between those 
opposite poles of truth, gradually, clearer and clearer, 
had arisen the vision of the Elect One—the Servant, the 
Son: Son of God, Son of man ; King and Sufferer; as 
a Judge on his throne, as a Lamb dumb before his 
shearers; redeeming, atoning, reigning—until at last 
this Mediator appears, this link between the Eternal 
and Infinite and the children of a day; this atonement 
between the Holy and the sinful: Immanuel; “ God 
with us.” And in words which must have had the 


48 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


deepest significance to the Jewish people, to those who 
week by week listened to the appeals of the prophets, 
the forerunner of the Christ, the “ voice crying in the 
wilderness,” proclaims him to be not only Son of God 
and Lamb of God, but “ He that hath the Bride.” 

The morning of joy had dawned at last. We feel 
it in every breath of the life-giving air, in every song of 
the universal hopes, in the glow of its love, in the stir 
of its new movement, in the expansion of its horizons. 
Night, the divider, has fled. The barriers are melting 
away between man and God, between nation and na¬ 
tion, between man and woman. 

And in nothing is the newness of life of this new 
day more manifest than in the women who are revealed 
in its morning light. 

The long wail of revolt is broken by Mary’s “ Be¬ 
hold the handmaid of the Lord!” The great matin 
hymn, the Magnificat, is sung by a woman’s voice. 

Glance for a moment at the beautiful familiar sto¬ 
ries in the gospels. In the first group are the two aged 
women, Elisabeth in the home and Anna in the temple; 
the sunset of human life and of the ancient world melt¬ 
ing into the dawn of the new. But Mary, the virgin 
mother, is altogether of the new day—no echo, but a 
new voice; mother of Him who is the life of all the liv¬ 
ing, crowned with the blessings of all the beatitudes: 
“blessed among women;” blessed as “she who be¬ 
lieved ;” blessed as she who “ heard the word of God 
and kept it;” blessed in her faithfulness unto death. 
She leads the glad company we know so well: Martha, 
who ministered to the Master’s earthly needs; Mary, 
who sat at his feet and understood his words, and 
brought the precious ointment for his burial; Mary of 


UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 49 

Magdala, last at the cross, first at the sepulchre, first 
messenger of the resurrection; the penitents whose 
names, tenderly veiled from history, we shall first hear 
from the book of life; the costly gifts of the alabaster 
boxes, both reproached by man, one for the stain of 
too much sin, one for the waste of too much love, both 
accepted by the Master. What a range, what heights 
and depths, what varieties of condition and character 
the brief story embraces ! 

What is it, then, that makes this new life so new in 
the world ? 

Is it not, primarily, that their Christianity is Christ? 
It is devotion, not to a cause merely, or a party, or a 
nation, or a race, that is its inspiration, but to the living 
Person, Son of God and Son of man, perfect Ideal of 
man, perfect manifestation of God, Redeemer, Master 
Friend. 

Women are often reproached with regarding per¬ 
sons rather than causes. In the lower sense this may 
sometimes be true. The lowest gossip as well as high¬ 
est history gathers around persons. But in the higher 
sense we may trust, we may be sure, it will be always 
true. History is, in one of its noblest aspects, the “ es¬ 
sence of biography,” because “ personality is the core 
of realitybecause without personality love is impos¬ 
sible, and “ living love is that good which is the begin¬ 
ning and end of the whole universe;” because “the 
true reality is not matter, and is still less idea, but is the 
living, personal Spirit of God and the world of personal 
spirits which he has created. They only are the place 
in which good and good things exist.”* 

Woman’s work must always be in great measure 
* Lotz, “ Microcosmos.” 

4 


Woman in Missions. 


5o 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


to recall from abstractions to persons, from “ causes ” 
or “societies” to human beings; to the men, women, 
children, suffering, sinful, redeemed, restored, victori¬ 
ous, of whom societies consist and whose “cause” is 
the cause of God. 

It is by the revelation of love as the deepest word, 
the central truth of the universe, through the glorifica¬ 
tion of service by Him who was among us as he that 
serveth, that woman has been and is being redeemed, 
liberated, understood, ennobled. The ideal of woman¬ 
hood—not of poor, weak, crippled womanhood, but of 
womanhood as God made it; that is, a life that has no 
meaning except in relation to God and to others—has 
become the ideal of humanity, a life whose essence is 
love sacrificing and serving; renouncing when renun¬ 
ciation is the way to serve; ruling when ruling is the 
way to serve; rebuking when rebuking is the way to 
serve; silently suffering when patience is the way to 
serve; fearlessly fighting when resisting is the way to 
serve; dying when death is the way to serve. 

And after this group, gathered round the child 
Jesus, the Healer, the Redeemer, the dying Saviour, 
the risen Lord, what comes next ? 

Is it a step downward from the last chapter of the 
Gospels to the first of the Acts of the Apostles, from 
the last visible steps of Jesus Christ on earth to the 
first visible steps of his church in the world ? Pic- 
torially it may certainly seem a step downward into 
prose and the commonplace; from the mother and 
the Magdalene at the cross, from the “ Mary ” and 
“ Rabboni ” at the sepulchre, it may look like a de¬ 
scent into very ordinary prose to Dorcas, sewing her 
coats and garments for the poor widows. But we know 


UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 5 I 

it is really a step onward—from receiving to giving, 
from being healed to healing, from the morning songs 
of rapturous welcome to the toiling and battling for a 
lost and suffering world through the burden and heat 
of the day; the glow of the morning, and the tones of 
the “ Mary ” and the “ Rabboni,” the “ Unto Me ” and 
“ I am with you all the days,” meanwhile, indeed, ma¬ 
king melody in the heart for ever, transfiguring the 
soberest prose into poetry: Dorcas, Lois and Eunice, 
Priscilla, Lydia, being still in heart at the feet of Jesus, 
listening to his words, adoring at his cross, at his empty 
sepulchre hearing his voice, for not once only, but once 
and for ever, the Christianity of the women of Chris¬ 
tendom is Christ. Through that one perfect Ideal of 
humanity, through that one perpetual living Presence, 
they are linked with all mankind. Not by the far-off 
commission of a founder, but by the living voice of 
their Lord they are sent forth day by day, hour by 
hour, with the command, “ Go to my brothers,” and the 
benediction, “ In that ye did it unto the least of these 
my brothers ye did it unto Me.” 

The stories of the women in the Acts of the Apos¬ 
tles are indeed typical: Dorcas leading the great army 
of succor for the poor and needy who, through all ad¬ 
vances in civilization and all forms of government, seem 
to be “ always with us;” Priscilla, the wife, the efficient 
“ help over against ” Aquila in the tent-making, and in 
the instructing more perfectly the eloquent Alexan¬ 
drian ; Lois and Eunice with the home training—most 
inalienable of all “ the rights of women,” most sacred 
of all their duties—the faith of the mother breathed 
into the son, the Holy Scriptures wrought into the 
child’s mind and heart with the tenderest memories at 


52 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


a mother’s knee; Lydia, “ seller of purple,” taking her 
honorable place in the world’s work, generous hostess 
of apostles, fearless succorer of martyrs; Phoebe, Persis, 
succoring many, bestowing much labor; the “ elect 
lady ” with her children “ walking in the truth,” ad¬ 
dressed with equal courtesy by the aged apostle: the 
daughters of Philip, prophetesses, carrying on into the 
new era the inspiring music of Miriam and Deborah, 
the victorious battle-songs of the wider warfare and 
the nobler conquests of the cross. All gifts of mind 
and heart, all uses, administrative or educational, all 
vocations are there, having their centre and roots in 
the family and the home, yet expanding beyond it, 
working through it, to the family of God, the lost 
sheep throughout the world. The home always the 
mightiest instrument and the truest model; with its 
divine classifications, not of “ like with like,” but of 
“ like in difference,” its inter-dependent inequalities of 
age and sex and relationship; and, nevertheless, the 
world being broken and imperfect as it is even in its 
homes, the imperfect homes ever supplemented, the 
corrupt homes remedied, by “ conventions,” societies, 
communities, sisterhoods, organizations of all kinds. 

The germ of all true woman’s work is indeed in 
these histories of the women of the Acts of the Apos¬ 
tles, the earliest church history. What are they but 
the leaders in that great army of liberation, that great 
company of healers ever needed on all the battle¬ 
fields ? 

The subsequent centuries work it out; through 
martyrdoms, in hospitals, through chivalry and monas¬ 
tic orders, throughout the middle ages, sometimes 
marred by Manichean misunderstandings of divine 


UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 53 


natural laws but never losing the great Christian ideal 
of service and sacrifice, until, at the era of the Refor¬ 
mation, once more the home takes its true place as the 
highest type of human life for those within; for those 
without, the fullest, sweetest fountain of life and succor 
to the world around. Throughout Christendom, on 
both sides of all ecclesiastical barriers, from St. Vincent 
de Paul and the sisters of charity to Elizabeth Fry in 
the prisons, the work of mercy flows ceaselessly on, 
fuller and stronger. 

Until now, at this day of fullest hope and widest 
openings, not a field of fruitful work is closed to us, for 
redressing wrongs or relieving misery, for redeeming 
the worst, and for lifting up the best to their highest 
development and fullest beauty. Still indeed we have 
to remember that the world, in its quietest shelters as 
in its widest spaces, is always a battle-field between 
right and wrong, the better and the best: that we 
never drift lazily into victory, that in the very homes 
which are So sacred the battle against “family egoism” 
is needed ; that unless the home is a fountain of living 
waters for the world around, it soon becomes a stag¬ 
nant pool, breeding malaria for its inmates. 

All fields are indeed open to us: home missions, 
foreign missions, city slums, village stagnations. The 
rights are won if love inspires us to use them nobly, if 
we never forget how much of woman’s work consists 
in raising “ politics and economics ” to their true place 
as “ branches of ethics,” and so making them living ; in 
recalling the world from idolatry of things to love of 
the persons for whom things exist. For we are indeed 
far from being liberated from the perils of idolatry. 
We are always making and building ideals, theories, 


54 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


formulas, laws, and then letting them become endued 
with a monstrous automatic, vampire life with which 
they clutch and crush our own. We heap up money in 
millions till the fertilizing rills which should irrigate the 
land are chilled into icebergs which freeze and crush 
our own souls; we make poor-laws to help the poor 
and let them be entangled into bonds to degrade and 
fetter the poor; we make hospitals to relieve the 
suffering and let them stiffen into mere medical 
schools; we build churches to lift hearts up to heaven 
and let them become mere roofs to shut the heavens 
out. Nothing is too low to be worshipped if it is 
gilded by self-love; nothing is too sacred to become 
an idol if we turn from the living Presence of him who 
lives and speaks through it, to the things, the society, 
the dogma itself—to any “ It ” from him. 

All fields are indeed now open to us, of science 
and art, of philanthropic and religious work. We may 
speak as freely as Deborah and Miriam, where and 
when we will, in any cause we embrace : women may 
sing to touch the hearts of thousands; they may write 
books to move, to uplift and strengthen the hearts of 
millions, with the advantage that people need not read 
the books unless they like, and that the audience of a 
book is spoken to one by one, in hours of loneliness or 
need, pain or sorrow, when the heart is most ready to 
be moved. 

One woman’s voice may bring hope into prisons 
where all who entered seemed to leave hope behind; 
the hand of another may give a death-blow to slavery : 
another may be inspired by such thoughtful compassion 
for the sick and wounded as to inaugurate a new era 
in the warfare with disease and the unhealthy con- 


UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 55 

ditions leading to it, and to raise nursing from a casual 
resource of any one who wants employment into a 
fine art and skilled craft of healing; another may be 
possessed by such a passion of succor and salvation 
for the lowest and most wretched as to give to thou¬ 
sands of fellow-workers a new meaning and inspiration 
to the old divine words, “ The Son of man is come 
to save that which was lostanother may arrest a 
nation on the fatal downward path of legalizing vice; 
another may take from a nation’s hand the posion cup 
of intemperance; and all this not by neglecting simple 
home duties but in fulfilling them, not apart from the 
husbands and the brothers and the sons, but inspiring 
them, and with their aid: the mother’s heart stirred 
by the loss of her own son to redress the wrongs of the 
slave mothers ; the noble woman who dared to brave 
reproach and scorn to rescue, her nation from the 
shame of recognizing that there must be a class of out¬ 
cast women, sustained throughout by the chivalrous 
support of a husband as gentle as any woman.* 

If indeed the courage of the men of a race fail in 
righting any wrong or battling with any iniquity, if 
among the forty thousand of Israel not a shield or 
spear is found to defend the right, doubtless to the end 
some Deborah will arise, in love to God and the op¬ 
pressed, to fight the battle as a mother in Israel. But 
we intend to fight together, man and woman, husband 
and wife, brother and sister, not in mean competition, 
still less in insane antagonism, but in glorious co¬ 
operation, side by side; woman for ever the help-meet 
“ over against ” man. 

We have a glorious company to follow. Century 
*Canon Butler and his wife, Josephine Butler. 


56 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 

after century they come, the women of Christianity, 
from every section of Christendom, through every age 
of the church, fulfilling the life of Christ, filling up the 
sufferings of Christ; healing, saving, teaching, leading 
onward and upward; refusing to recognize that any 
need be outcasts, to despair of rescuing from any 
depths, or of lifting to any heights; translating the 
prose of the world through divine and human love into 
poetry; transfiguring the wildernesses of the world 
by patience and much labor into paradises. All the 
buildings look ugly while the scaffolding is still up. 
All the battles look deadly prose while they are being 
fought, largely by the rank and file ; fought through 
failures and mistakes and irritating wounds, through 
blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The palms and 
the garlands come afterwards, and not always visibly, 
or to those who have fought the hardest. For, extend 
the glorious muster-roll as we will, we always end with 
“ time would fail me to tell ” and “ the great multitude 
no man number.” 

Christianity is the ennobling and fulfilling of wo¬ 
manhood because it is the manifestation of supreme 
love and the glorification of service; because the ideal 
of redeemed humanity is revealed in “the Bride of the 
Lamb ” sharing for ever the fruitful service and vigor¬ 
ous rule of the self-sacrificing Love which is on the 
throne of the universe. 


ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 


57 


HISTORICAL PAPERS ON WOMAN’S 
MISSIONS. 

ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 

BY CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE. 

In being asked to describe the work of English 
women in foreign missions I have received a great 
honor. I am conscious of inability to do justice to so 
wide, and often so touching a subject, but I can only 
beg for indulgence and hope that my incompetence 
may be excused. 

It is remarkable that the first female missionaries 
on record were Englishwomen. I mean those who went 
for the sake of the mission; for I do not reckon Nonna, 
who was sold as a slave in Iberia and taught her own¬ 
ers the gospel, nor even St. Bridget, who was a native 
of Ireland, where she aided greatly in the mission of 
St. Patrick. 

But it was the English St. Boniface who, while 
endeavoring to convert the Germans, first felt the need 
of the cooperation of good women who might instruct 
their sisters in those homely arts and gentle habits 
without which there was little hope of Christianity 
prevailing. He therefore wrote to the Abbess of Wim- 
borne, in Dorsetshire, to send him some of her nuns, 
of whom Walburga, the sister of one of his priests, was 
to be the chief, and another whom he specially asked 


58 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


for was his own near kinswoman, Lioba, or love. Wal- 
burga left a deep impression, and both are revered as 
saints, but we know little of their individual work, and 
full a thousand Jrears had passed before the church 
began again to lengthen her cords and strengthen her 
stakes. 

Spanish and French women had been at work as 
nuns in South America and Canada, but it was not 
till, as we may truly say, the spirit of love for the 
heathen descended upon William Carey that much 
systematic attempt was made to send out missions. 
“ If the Lord should make windows in heaven, could 
this be ?” expressed the first feelings of an aged minister 
on hearing his bold proposal to endeavor to bring in 
the heathen. It was just a century ago that this devoted 
man set forth from England with his family and was 
refused a resting-place by the East India Company, 
who were scrupulous to a hurtful degree as to their 
engagement not to interfere with the religion of the 
natives. He could only make his headquarters at the 
Danish factory of Serampore. Poor Mrs. Carey, an 
uneducated woman, without enthusiasm, who had only 
followed her husband from necessity, lost her senses 
in the new and trying life, and never was anything but 
a burden and a drag; but Mrs. Marshman, the wife of 
his colleague, was a true helper, both by precept and 
the example of a true Christian life. Indeed it was in 
that family that Havelock acquired his deeper serious 
impressions. 

Missionaries had begun from that time to be sent 
forth. The great and ancient Society for the Propaga¬ 
tion of the Gospel at first held its chief duty to be to 
provide for the needs of the English colonists, which 


ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 


59 


did indeed rapidly outrun its powers, so that perhaps 
it was impossible for the work among the heathen not 
to come to the hands of the Church Missionary Society, 
and of non-conformist societies. 

The honor that is due to these long-suffering wo¬ 
men of all denominations is unspeakable. There have 
been heroines among them, such as the two wives who, 
left for a time by their husbands on one of the Pacific 
islands, heard that a cannibal feast was about to take 
place, obtained a boat, and rushed upon the savages, 
heedless of the danger of provoking them, and suc¬ 
ceeded in saving one victim though they were too late 
for the other. Mrs. Gordon, after patient years of 
work with her husband in the Isle of Erromanga, found 
the minds of the people turned against them, perhaps 
because they had threatened the country with divine 
wrath if the wicked and cruel customs were persisted 
in, so that when a fatal attack of measles set in it was 
supposed to be their work. A party of the heathens 
came up to their huts. Some detained Mrs. Gordon 
among the trees while her husband was cut down with 
tomahawks, and, happily before she knew his fate, 
another killed her with two blows on neck and back. 
Bishop Patteson read the burial service over their 
graves some weeks later. They were of the Scottish 
Free Church and born in Nova Scotia, and their mar¬ 
tyrdom was on May 20, 1861. 

But these great events were only incidents in the 
history of what many and many a missionary’s wife 
has had to endure day by day. Fresh from the com¬ 
forts and cleanliness of an English home she has had 
to go out with her husband among wild races, with 
nothing of civilized life save the small supply they 


6o 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


could carry with them in boxes. Generally on arriving 
they have had no shelter but a filthy hut full of curious 
savages, until a rough abode could be put up with 
their own hands, and there in some cases the least dis¬ 
play of the most ordinary articles is a signal for rob¬ 
bery by the natives, or significant hints, if not demands, 
from their chiefs. The wife longs to teach and raise 
the women around her, but she has to attend to her 
husband’s comfort, wash, cook, and do all for him with 
far fewer conveniences than any cottager in a civilized 
country, feeling all the time that home comfort and 
ease of mind are essential to his work and health, and 
thus absolutely to his efficiency. Yet she does teach 
and help with all her might, showing by her example 
what it is to be a pure, self-devoted, faithful Christian 
woman, and beginning to awaken the aspirations of 
those around her. Often the birth of children adds to 
her sufferings and difficulties, and unnumbered are 
those innocent victims to climate and want of proper 
food who lie in unnamed graves in Polynesia and 
Africa, having truly, though unknowingly, died for the 
spread of the Gospel. 

Second only in number to these children are their 
mothers. There is no roll on earth to reckon up the 
young wives and mothers who sank under their toils ; 
but we cannot take up a mission journal without find¬ 
ing that either the leader or one of his companions had 
to mourn for his young wife. She had gone out, devo¬ 
ting herself and full of hope, to find the toil beyond her 
strength and the climate fatal, and to die, happy if she 
did not leave a babe to grieve its father’s heart till it 
was laid beside her. Noble women these were, with 
hearts given to fulfil their Lord’s command, and truly 


ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 61 

as much martyrs as though they had perished by sword 
or steel. 

Other tongues and other pens, however, speak of 
the work of these persons, of various Christian com¬ 
munions. The English Church herself has a far larger 
and wider scope of mission work than is known or 
guessed at except by experts. She has her emissaries 
in no less than eighty or eighty-one dioceses, begin¬ 
ning from 1720, and gradually extending the work 
from the British colonies to the hitherto untrodden 
fields. The primary work of the Society for the Prop¬ 
agation of the Gospel was among the colonists, though 
it began to gather in the natives and to extend its bor¬ 
ders, while the Church Missionary Society began with 
heathen lands, each establishing clergy and schools 
wherever their emissaries went, the clergymen’s wives 
doing their share according to their powers and oppor¬ 
tunities, and ladies joining them to assist in school¬ 
keeping. 

When George Augustus Selwyn set forth to New 
Zealand he carried with him a very effective assistant 
in his wife. Many of the Maoris were by this time 
nominal Christians, and her work was to train the 
women and girls so as to fit them to be wives to the 
native catechists and clergy and to raise them above 
being the bearers of all burdens—so that a chief was 
seen riding across a river on the shoulders of his wife 
to save his new patent-leather boots! Sir William 
Martyn, the judge, was the head for many years of 
the theological college for native clergy, and his wife 
was a most useful assistant. Her letters, as well as 
Mrs. Selwyn’s, give most amusing descriptions of the 
life of teaching. Hers are published as a narrative by 


62 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and 
range from very early days to those of comparative civ¬ 
ilization. In what was called Heki’s rebellion, caused 
by a quarrel about surveying for a road, the wives of 
the clergy had to flee to Auckland and the adjacent 
parts, and one, looking from the window as a wild 
troop of Maoris went by, exclaimed, “ There’s my best 
Sunday bonnet”—on the head of one of the rebels. 

But there never was personal danger at this time, 
though in the rising of the Hau Haus, which was a 
revolt against Christianity, two clergymen and their 
wives were captured, and one priest was put to death 
to fulfil the demands of some terrible old superstition. 
The others were rescued by the personal interference 
of the dauntless bishop. 

We pass on to the Cape of Good Hope and South 
Africa, not without a tribute to Mrs. Gray, the wife of 
the bishop of Cape Town. One who knew her well 
says she was “ the truest helpmeet that ever lived; one 
of those rare people who will point out the up-hill way, 
if it is the right one, and encourage her husband to 
take it instead of the easier path round. Her great love 
never made her shrink from suffering for him, and she 
would have encouraged him to go to the stake.” No 
doubt she gave her life for the work, for her illness was 
brought on by accompanying him on his visitations and 
acting as his secretary. She was the architect of most 
of the churches in the colony. 

Miss Katharine Barter went out under them, ho¬ 
ping to do native work, and succeeded in isolated cases. 
Her “ Home-life in Africa ” and “Adventures of a Plain 
Woman ” give a curious picture of the Kaffirs and her 
doings among them. 


ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 63 

The huge diocese was divided, and in 1853 Bishop 
Colenso was chosen to the see of Natal in ignorance of 
his heterodox opinions. That he, as well as his wife 
and daughter, had a deep affection for the Kaffirs there 
is, however, no doubt. He had a school for the young 
chiefs in his own house, and such was the devotion of 
Mrs. Colenso to the cause that she actually washed the 
feet of these lads every night, finding it impossible to 
trust any one else to do it; and Kaffir human nature is 
hardly tolerable to European noses in close quarters 
without such precautions. 

When the diocese of Natal was formed, a young 
widow named Henrietta Woodrow offered herself for 
the work at Durban. There her beginning was with a 
little orphan home for English children; but while learn¬ 
ing the Kaffir language she so managed to speak to 
those who came to her that her interpreter said they 
went away “ with tears in their heart.” After a time 
she married a Scotsman, Robert Robertson, who had 
been ordained by the bishop of Cape Town, and they 
settled on a grant from Government upon the Umlazi 
River, where they gathered Kaffirs about them—or¬ 
phans, children given by their parents and older con¬ 
verts—and did their best to Christianize and civilize 
them, though in the case of girls the custom of buying 
wives with cows was a terrible hindrance, for no man 
could call his wife his own till her price in cattle had 
been paid, and even then he was sorely tempted to ob¬ 
tain more wives if his means increased. 

Later Mr. and Mrs. Robertson moved farther into 
the country, forming a considerable settlement, called 
Kwamagwaza, or the preaching-place, where they had 
a church, several Christian married couples, numbers 


6 4 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


of children trusted to them for education, and numerous 
refugees from the free country who had been “smelt 
out ” as guilty of witchcraft, and would have been ruth¬ 
lessly massacred at home. Indeed Mr. Robertson had 
to extort permission to keep them from Cetewayo, or 
they would have been murdered and his settlement 
broken up. Mrs. Robertson, though in very feeble 
health, was the life and soul of the mission, teaching, 
influencing, winning souls, making the wild women and 
girls gentle, helpful Christians. Her exceeding value 
was only thoroughly known when in 1863 she was 
taken away, being crushed by the upsetting of a wagon 
on her way to Durban, protecting to the last breath a 
tiny Kaffir boy who was in the wagon with her and 
was unhurt. 

Nearly at the same time that her venture began, 
Charles Frederick Mackenzie, the youngest son of one 
of Sir Walter Scott’s friends, was chosen as archdeacon 
of Natal, and took out with him his elder sister Anne. 
She was soon most deeply interested in the mission, 
and indeed the eldest, motherly sister, Mrs. Dundas, 
had written to him before he went out that the tone of 
the whole family would be raised by his undertaking 
it. Alice, the younger sister, soon joined the two, and 
they found a home on the Umlahli River, in the neigh¬ 
borhood of numerous Kaffir kraals of beehive-shaped 
huts as well as near an English camp and a good many 
scattered English colonists. Their first abode was a 
mud-built erection, with perpendicular sides and a 
veranda, with two rooms, one the chapel, the other the 
living room; and their bedrooms were beehive huts. 
The archdeacon’s Sunday was spent in riding about to 
perform five different services, and in the week he and 


ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 65 

his sisters kept school, one for the colonists’ children, 
who used to arrive on ox-back, and one for the Kaffirs, 
old and young; dealing with them on the pattern ol 
the Robertsons, who often paid the Seaforth home a 
visit bringing with them the whole family of converts 
and adopted children, whom they durst not leave. 
Anne Mackenzie had the frailest possible health, and at 
first lived chiefly to teach the whites; but Alice, “ the 
black sister,” was devoted to the Kaffirs, and when her 
brother and sister went to England on ecclesiastical 
business she remained to help in Bishop Colenso’s 
black college. 

While in England Archdeacon Mackenzie was 
chosen missionary bishop, to head the mission sent out 
to the Zambesi by the universities in the zeal excited 
by the appeals of Dr. Livingstone. The two sisters 
were ready to cast in their lot with him, and when he 
went forward to prepare the way Anne followed, to¬ 
gether with Mrs. Burrup, the young wife of one of his 
clergy. Alas ! when, almost dead with fever, they went 
up the sluggish river in a boat it was only to find that 
they actually had overshot the grave where Bishop 
Mackenzie was lying at the confluence of the Ruo, and 
that Mr. Burrup had only survived him a short time. 
Anne returned to England, broken down with fever 
and constantly suffering, yet she became in her quiet 
chamber an absolute mother of missions, devoting her¬ 
self above all to the foundation of a Zulu bishopric in 
memory of her brother and to carry on his earlier work. 
This was her primary object in publishing a little mag¬ 
azine called the “ Net Cast into Many Waters,” but it 
was the organ by which she made known, and obtained 
rneans for supplying, the thousand and one needments 

Woman in Missions. 5 


66 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


of missionaries, from church bells or altar-cloths down 
to pictures, wedding-rings and thimbles, giving patterns 
for the varieties of clothes for converts, and collect¬ 
ing them when made. The charm of her sweetness 
and repressed enthusiasm had a great power of 
keeping up interest in missions until 1877, when at 
her death she left the work in a far more advanced 
and organized condition than when she began the 
work. 

The Ladies’ Association, in connection with the 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, had been 
formed with perhaps a wider scope than the “ Net” had 
covered. It reaches into all the dioceses in connection 
with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and 
the Church Missionary Society attends to the needs of 
the missions connected with them. Almost every place 
in England has a working party, generally in Lent, for 
sending out clothes to the converts, and a great many 
persons and schools or villages collectively subscribe 
for the maintenance of a native scholar at one or other 
of the orphanages or schools. Requests for special 
needs are circulated in the magazines and often an¬ 
swered. Funds for the maintenance of native teachers 
are also supplied by this agency and are much needed. 

The cause of sisterhoods has triumphed, and it 
began to be felt that a more certain supply of female 
assistants could through them be obtained than through 
missionaries’ families or volunteers. Some of the sis¬ 
ters from Lydia Sellon’s primary home at Plymouth 
were the first to go out with Bishop Staley to Honolu¬ 
lu, but Hawaii being already Christian they hardly 
come under the head of missionaries, though they 
found it important to teach little girls to nurse dolls in 


ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 67 

order to persuade them when they grew to woman’s 
estate that it was more desirable to fondle a baby than 
a puppy or a little pig. Two little maidens whom they 
sent to England were the great delight and amusement 
of Dr. Pusey in his old age. 

Dean Douglas, of Cape Town, with the sanction of 
his bishop, decided to endeavor to form a sisterhood at 
the Home of St. George for the many needs of Cape 
Town, a terrible place, with all the evils of a harbor and 
garrison town aggravated by those of an extraordina¬ 
rily mixed population—Kaffir, Hottentot, Dutch, Eng¬ 
lish and Malay. Orphans left by unsuccessful colonists 
were numerous, and had only been provided for by be¬ 
ing sent to prison, till a good lady, Mary Arthur, took 
up their cause, and actually maintained those whom she 
adopted by going out to give lessons as a music mis¬ 
tress. 

Dean Douglas was appointed to the bishopric of 
Bombay and had left Africa before the arrival of the 
sisters; but they worked under Bishop Gray, at the 
many kinds of missions needed, until his death, when it 
was found difficult to keep up the number of sisters, 
and it was therefore affiliated to the All Saints sister¬ 
hood in London, by whom the supply of workers has 
been filled up for the multifarious labors of Cape Town : 
schools for the gentry, and for the poorer English, also 
for Kaffirs, and orphanages, hospital work, and homes 
for penitents. There is a sisterhood of the Resurrec¬ 
tion, numbering fifteen, at Grahamstown. 

Africa also finds work for sisters of charity from 
St. Raphael’s, Bristol, and for deaconesses in Kaffra- 
ria. Miss Lawrence and, later, Miss Allen have kept a 
missionary school and managed a hospital in Madagas- 


68 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


car with much effect and success, though with infinite 
difficulty and suffering in that fatal climate. 

India needed all this, and more than this, variety of 
work, for its many kinds of needs, including not merely 
its thousands of natives and their English masters but 
Eurasians—namely, persons of British parentage but 
acclimatized for one or more generations to India. 
Schools had been set on foot, with vigorous, hard-work¬ 
ing Englishwomen attending to them, ever since the 
days of Bishop Daniel Wilson, and they bred up many 
orphan girls who generally became the wives of Hindoo 
catechists or schoolmasters, or of the boys bred in simi¬ 
lar institutions ; but the girls of outside families were 
almost unattainable if of high caste, as they could not 
go to school, and were generally married as absolute 
infants to some boy of the same age or a little older. 
If he died, though the horrible custom of burning the 
widow was put a stop to by authority, the poor woman 
remained for all her life in a wretched state, not allowed 
to eat with the family, wear ornaments, or enjoy any of 
the few pleasures of the Zenana, but treated like a slave 
guilty of having brought ill-luck. The Zenana, un¬ 
approachable to the missionary, was the stronghold 
of heathenism, for the women were wrapped in super¬ 
stition, and the men and boys, who could learn better 
things, shrank from encountering the storm of re¬ 
proaches and wailings which any infraction of caste 
brought on them from their mothers and wives. 

Sisterhoods did much: the Clewer and All Saints 
sisterhoods at Calcutta, the East Grinstead at Colombo 
in Ceylon, where the women are chiefly Buddhist and 
less secluded. The Wantage sisterhood of St. Mary 
have a large contingent at Paona, in the Bombay dio- 


ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 69 

cese, occupied in education, and other forms of work, 
hospital and mission. They have come in contact with 
some of the class, now growing up in India, of Hindoo 
ladies, highly educated, and quite on a level in intellect 
and attainments with their European sisters, so as to be 
able to do their part for evil or for good. One young 
widow with her little daughter came to the Home at 
Wantage to study, and returned to India to become a 
lecturer. 

No means have been more effective than the 
Zenana mission for carrying light and cultivation into 
the homes and families. When it was commenced so 
little was known on the subject that I remember a 
meeting in a provincial town where the clergyman 
who distributed the leaflets was asked what tribe was 
called Zenanas. Something like this inquirer was a 
lady who insisted on sending illuminated texts to Miss 
Mackensie for the Zulus in New Zealand! 

The ladies of the Zenana mission, of whom the 
author, A. L. O. E., has been one, do not necessarily 
begin with Christianity, but do what they can to open 
the minds and enliven the melancholy lives of the high 
caste women, whom they generally find secluded in the 
most dreary part of the abode, with no outlook except 
into a narrow, naked yard, and nothing to do, for 
needlework is beneath their dignity; but the English 
ladies have prevailed gradually to introduce employ¬ 
ments, such as fancy work, to teach reading, and to 
bring in some idea of religion. Most of the ladies of 
the Zenana mission have medical training, which is an 
excellent introduction and has been of infinite value, 
though their treatment has to contend with the oppo¬ 
sition of the whole household and all the female rela- 


70 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


tions, whose ideas run counter to all science and too 
often undo all that has been attempted by the Mem 
Sahib. 

Things are, however, rapidly advancing. The men 
generally receive enough European education to make 
them not unwilling that their wives should have some 
culture, and in the five years during which the Earl of 
Dufferin (now Marquis of Dufierin and Ava) was Gov¬ 
ernor General his wife did wonders in the cause of fe¬ 
male education, not only establishing schools but win¬ 
ning the girls to attend them. These are not as a rule 
definitely Christian, but they do much to prepare the 
way. 

The Church Missionary Society has a great number 
of emissaries, both the wives of missionaries and ladies 
who have devoted themselves, deaconesses, and native 
women, mostly brought up in orphanages where many 
babies were received after the Indian famine. The 
population at Tinnevelly, the home of the great Dane, 
Frederick Schwartz, is chiefly Christian, and possesses 
two bishops. 

Rangoon, in the lately acquired Burmah, has sundry 
efficient workers both among the intelligent Burmese 
and the Karen mountaineers. Corea is a new field of 
work, and the bishop has obtained the help of five 
sisters from St. Peter’s, Kilburn. 

China has been chiefly the province of the Church 
Missionary Society. Roman-catholic sisters, chiefly of 
French and Irish birth, have, however, done much good 
there, and have several houses. They have undergone 
special dangers, and even martyrdoms, from the fanati¬ 
cal Chinese, little restrained by the mandarins. Girl 
babies, being thought quite valueless, are often “ put 


ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 


away,” that is, exposed or buried alive by their cruel 
parents as soon as born, and the good sisters have en¬ 
deavored to prevent this by offering a price for any 
that are brought to them, and if they survive they 
are bred up as Christians. The Chinese populace, 
hating the “ foreign devils ” and enduring their intru¬ 
sion with bitter dislike, have periodical frenzies of 
supposing that the children are slaughtered and used 
in some horrid ritual. The mob rises on the defence¬ 
less ladies and several of them have died in these cruel 
hands. Indeed only recently several of them had to 
escape amid a storm of mud and stones to find shelter 
in the American Consulate. 

There is an English bishop at Hong Kong and 
for the North West provinces, where the mission ladies 
have been able to effect much. When once Chinese 
indifference is overcome, and they cease to say, “ What 
is your sublime religion ?” they become excellent con¬ 
verts, and it is said that one Chinese proselyte is worth 
a dozen coolies. The ladies find one great difficulty, 
in preventing the compression of the feet among the 
women, and I have read a piteous account of the suf¬ 
fering of a little girl whose Christian father died and 
whose heathen relations chose to bind her feet when 
she was past infancy, producing such fever and exhaus¬ 
tion as at last to cause her death. 

The brilliant intelligence of the Japanese has in 
many cases accepted the faith so heartily as to recall 
the memory of the martyrs of their church in the six¬ 
teenth century. 

I have not here attempted to tell the work of the 
Scottish Presbyterians, the London mission, or that 
of other denominations, simply that of the Church of 


72 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


England through her church women ; and I pass over 
many isolated efforts of theirs, such as the brave and 
noble life of Mrs. MacDougal, wife of the bishop of 
Labuan, who lived for many years among the Dyaks of 
Borneo, and of Miss Whately, the daughter of the 
noted archbishop of Dublin, who devoted herself to 
the education of Egyptian girls, and trained many out 
of the crass ignorance of Mohammedan women, 
though she durst not attempt to convert them. 

The accounts I have been able to collect show the 
Church of England at work in 80 dioceses, where she 
employs 179 sisters and deaconesses, 263 English lay 
women and 726 native women trained as teachers. It 
is a record showing at least that something has been 
attempted, though far more might be done. Al¬ 
together 1,623 British female subjects from all denom¬ 
inations can be counted as engaged in mission work ; 
nor does this represent the whole number, as many are 
nowhere enrolled. 

There is an institution at Warminster where ladies 
may obtain practical training for mission work, and at 
Islington the Church Missionary Society has a home 
where the children of missionaries are received for 
education. 

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel also 
does something for the education of these children, but 
prefers to take the cases individually. 

I regret that there is really no history of the work, 
and the means for forming one are wanting, but per¬ 
haps you will kindly accept this as the best essay I 
have been able to put together. 


FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 


73 


THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING FEMALE 
EDUCA TION IN THE EAST. 

BY MISS E. JANE WHATELEY, ONE OF ITS VICE- 
PRESIDENTS.* 

Fifty-nine years ago, in the summer of 1834, a 
little company of ladies were assembled in a private 
drawing-room in London to listen to the exhortations 
of an American missionary, the Rev. David Abeel, just 
returned from China to recruit his broken health by a 
visit to England. 

Mr. Abeel had come from the scene of his labors 
with a heart full of sorrow for the misery and degrada¬ 
tions of the women of the country. He felt that his 
efforts and those of his fellow-workers could not reach 
their case. The gospel, even when preached in their 
country, was virtually shut out from them. 

When the Christian Church first awoke from its 
long sleep of indifference to the call to “ teach all na¬ 
tions,” the work of missionaries was, naturally enough 
at first, purely general. In some countries this might 
make no practical difference; but in India, China, and 
the East generally, domestic and social habits com¬ 
pletely excluded women from the preaching and teach¬ 
ing of men. The existing schools were usually only 
for boys. The missionary had no means of addressing 

* This paper was the last ever written by this gifted woman. 
She was the daughter of the famous Archbishop Whateley, and 
the sister of Miss Mary Whateley, the head and foundress of the 
Cairo Mission Schools in Egypt. 


74 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


the wives and mothers of his hearers. This was pain¬ 
fully impressed on Mr. AbeePs mind. He pictured to 
his English friends the state of this vast mass of East¬ 
ern women, oppressed, trampled on, secluded, and 
utterly ignorant: unable to be a power for good, and 
yet capable of being a mighty power for evil; for the 
despised heathen mother had her own means of influ¬ 
encing her sons, and could oft«m effectually prevent 
them from listening to the gospel message. What was 
to be done for this poor, down-trodden, benighted 
multitude ? Only their own sex could reach them. 
Would not some of the Christian women of England 
stretch out a helping hand ? 

This was the substance of Mr. AbeePs appeal. It 
stirred up the hearts of his hearers, and the result was 
that a small band of ladies of different denominations 
formed themselves into a society for the purpose of 
meeting the want so powerfully described. It was 
entitled the “ Society for Promoting Female Education 
in the East,” India to be included in its sphere as well 
as China. The title seems cumbrous, but it was the 
only one which at the time appeared to apply to the 
effort to be made; for the direct agencies of house-to- 
house visiting, addresses to groups of women, medical 
and zenana work, etc., were absolutely shut out. The 
only way practicable was to endeavor to influence 
women by means of education, and this could only be 
done among the humblest classes, as no others would 
attend. 

Even this means was looked on by most mission¬ 
ary workers as hopeless. One most eminent and 
honored laborer among the heathen in India actual¬ 
ly declared that to attempt female education there 


FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 75 

was as hopeless as to try to scale a wall 500 yards 
high. 

Nevertheless, individual efforts had been made 
some fourteen or fifteen years before this first gathering 
of English ladies. Miss Bird had gone to Calcutta in 
1819 on her own resources, and while living with a 
brother there had endeavored to do all she could for 
the neglected girls around her. Miss Cooke, after¬ 
wards Mrs. Wilson, entered the mission field at the 
same time, undaunted and undiscouraged even by her 
best friends advising her to take her return passage in 
the vessel she had just quitted. She went to visit a 
boys’ school, and there found a little girl who had been 
repeatedly imploring to be taken in there and taught 
to read. She was Miss Cooke’s first pupil, and others 
were added; but the work went on slowly. A third 
lady had gone to Malacca in 1827 at the suggestion of 
a China missionary. 

But these were only isolated efforts. The first sys¬ 
tematic attempt to reach the women of heathen lands 
in the only way in which they could be reached— 
through their own sex—was made by our Society, which 
is consequently the earliest and first in the field. 

The difficulties they had to encounter, with so gen¬ 
eral an impression that woman’s work in the mission 
field was a wild, romantic, and visionary idea, can hardly 
be estimated at the present day. But in spite of all 
they did find a lady willing to go forth to Malacca in 
aid of the work already commenced by Miss Newell. 
This was their first step. The next was to open a school 
for Chinese girls at Singapore; and this was perhaps 
one of the most important outposts gained. For 
through Singapore China could be reached, and to 


;6 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


this day the school commenced under Miss Grant in 
1843, and continued under Miss Cooke, is an invaluable 
help to Chinese missions by training up a body of effi¬ 
cient Christian Chinese women, able to do good work 
either as wives and mothers of Christian families or as 
teachers and Bible women. Two years after Miss 
Grant’s school was commenced she had the joy of 
seeing three of her pupils baptized into the Church of 
Christ. 

About the same time a lady of independent means, 
Miss Aldersey, a member of the committee of the infant 
Society, went to establish herself at Ningpo, and opened 
a school there in the midst of great difficulties. The 
fruits of that work have been evident at the end of long 
years, and an Anglo-Indian pupil of hers was after¬ 
wards the wife of one of the earliest missionary bishops 
in China. 

Schools in India had been helped by the Society 
from the beginning: but the time was now come for 
such a direct work in that country as had never been 
looked on before as even possible. Not long after 
the Society’s commencement four Hindoo gentlemen 
actually consented to allow a lady to visit the secluded 
women of their houses, and teach not only needlework 
but reading from Christian school-books. 

This was the inauguration of Zenana work. Till 
then, the Zenanas, or apartments of Hindoo ladies, had 
been as effectually barred as the gates of the strong¬ 
est prison-house. Now the “ wall five hundred yards 
high ” was to be scaled and the way opened for the 
numerous “ Zenana societies ” which have since been 
enabled to enter in. This humble and at this time 
little known Society was the one to open the doors. 


FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 77 

In 1842 they sent out the first agent for direct Zenana 
work on a larger scale: Miss Burton was appointed to 
commence the work at Bombay. 

It was a slow and gradual one. Many were the 
difficulties : sometimes the door seemed closed by an 
outburst of heathen bigotry; often, in many places, 
the Christian teacher’s way would have been open if 
she would have consented to lay aside her Bible: 
but they were faithful to the charge laid on them, they 
would not yield, and by patient, gentle perseverance 
they won their way for themselves and the Book. 
The work extended—to South India and Ceylon on 
one side, to North India on another; on the Western 
side, Palestine and Syria were entered and schools 
established ; as soon as Japan was open to missionary 
effort the Society’s agents were ready to enter. The 
fort had been stormed in every direction, and so, little 
by little, the sphere of action has extended, and the 
labors of the Society became year by year more 
abundant. 

At present its field is wider than that of any one 
other society of Female Missions, including India, 
China, Japan, the Straits, Ceylon, Mauritius, West and 
South Africa, the Levant, and Persia. 

But the example set was speedily followed, and we 
rejoice to be able to point to kindred associations in 
England, Scotland, America and the Continent, with¬ 
out counting the numerous private and individual ef¬ 
forts made on the same lines. Truly the promise, “ a 
little one shall become a thousand,” has been carried 
out to the letter; and the small group of praying wo¬ 
men who assembled at Mr. Abeel’s appeal in 1834 
could hardly have anticipated that in half-a century 


78 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


more the labors of Christian female missionaries should 
be extended over nearly the whole world. 

Meantime our Society, the first in the field, has 
not relaxed its energies. After nearly sixty years’ un¬ 
remitting labor we may briefly sum up its present work 
under the following heads : 

1. Zenana work in India; which is carried on by 
the Society at six principal stations in that country, 
besides partially aiding six others in addition. 

2. Medical missions, wherever openings can be 
found, where lady practitioners can obtain access to 
suffering women who can obtain no other efficient re¬ 
lief in sickness. 

3. Village missions, and work among the crowds 
who attend native festivals. 

4. Schools of various kinds—boarding, day, and 
Sunday. In every country where the society works 
these are established, and many others not directly 
under their control are aided by them constantly. 

5. House to house visitation, and Bible and sewing 
classes. 

6. The training of native agents for Zenana mis¬ 
sionaries, Bible women, district visitors and school 
teachers. This is one of the most important branches 
of the work, and is diligently carried on. There is 
now a numerous body of well-trained Christian native 
workers, in all the countries where the Society is em¬ 
ployed, busily engaged in all these various departments 
of labor among the women and girls whose tongue they 
speak. 

7. Mothers’ meetings, and branches of the Young 
Women’s Christian Association, and of the Bible and 
Prayer Union. 


FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 79 

Of course these various branches are variously 
carried out in their details according to the country 
and station where they are working. But in all of 
them the word of God is in the hands of the mission 
teacher, and her first aim is to lead all those she instructs 
to the knowledge of salvation through Christ and the 
blessed truths of the gospel. Great pains are taken to 
ensure good and practical education of all kinds, but 
Christian training is the highest object and never lost 
sight of. 

In the early days of the Society it was only, as has 
been observed, among the humblest classes that these 
educational efforts could be made: now all ranks and 
all classes are open to influence, and wherever it has 
been possible to enter the Society’s agents have been 
ready to do so. 

Besides the stations and agents under the direct 
control of the Society it has been from its earliest 
foundation the medium of extending help to, and 
friendly cooperation with, many independent workers 
who had gone out on their own charges, but found 
after a time that aid from home was needed. Miss 
Aldersey and Miss Baxter in China, Mrs. Watson in 
Syria, my own sister in Egypt, were among those who 
have received this fraternal aid, and there are others 
who still live to avail themselves of it and work hand 
in hand with the Society. Many schools, either 
privately established or connected with other missions, 
are almost entirely supported by the sale of boxes of 
work forwarded by the committee annually. 

To detail all, or even a small part of the results of 
this work of fifty-nine years, time and space far beyond 
what is at our command would fail. A few instances 


8o 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


may give some idea of the blessings which have fol¬ 
lowed. Only within the last year, a Christian lady of 
Madras, Mrs. Sattianadham, was called to her rest. 
She was the daughter of a mother trained in the Soci¬ 
ety’s schools, as she herself also had been: and during 
her life she was the centre and directress of an exten¬ 
sive Zenana and school mission in which her daughters 
are still employed. And this is only one case out of 
many in which one generation after another of native 
Christian women trained in these schools have been 
carrying on active mission and educational work among 
their own countrywomen, and giving at the same time 
an example of Christian life in the family at home. 

Some years ago, two ladies deeply interested in 
the work were visiting the Asiatic Home in London, 
in which many Hindoo ayahs are received while wait¬ 
ing an opportunity of returning to their own country. 

Among these groups their attention was directed 
to one woman whose countenance and bearing had 
something quite unlike the rest. There was a look of 
intelligence and thought, a civilized air which con¬ 
trasted with the faces around her. The thought struck 
them both, “ Surely this woman must be a Christian.” 

They entered into conversation with her—she 
spoke English sufficiently well—and they found she 
was an old pupil of Miss Austen, one of the Society’s 
agents at Madras. She was a Christian from convic¬ 
tion, and when asked if they could do anything for her 
made it an especial request that she might have some 
tracts and portions of Scripture in her own tongue for 
distribution. 

In China and the Straits the same experience is 
met with. One native catechist, sent to a peculiarly 


FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 8 1 

difficult and arduous Chinese-speaking station, where 
he met with continual opposition, said he could hardly 
have stood his ground without the support and courage 
and sympathy of his Christian wife, a pupil trained in 
Miss Cooke’s school at Singapore, the same which had 
been commenced in the early years of our work. Many 
such trained Christian women are now acting as 
Bible women and teachers in China and Chinese-speak¬ 
ing stations. 

Those who have visited schools in Syria and Pales¬ 
tine have been ready to bear witness to the excellence 
of those established under the Society’s auspices in the 
Lebanon and the Holy Land. The boarding-schools 
especially, at Nazareth and Bethlehem, have awakened 
a lively interest in all who have seen them. 

In- Persia efficient work has been commenced ; 
one most highly qualified and valued agent has been 
arrested by death in the middle of her work, but 
others will not be lacking to fill her place. 

In South Africa, Kaffir and Zulu girls been have 
rescued from what would have been a life of unspeak¬ 
able degradation, as well as misery, by the excellent 
boarding-schools established at several stations. 

A good work has also long been carried on in 
more than one locality in West Africa, and many 
schools aided from the Society’s funds and the sale of 
work. 

But we can only indicate thus briefly scenes of 
Christian labor throughout all the Eastern Hemisphere, 
which sufficiently show that the fortress once deemed 
impregnable has been entered, and the barriers broken 
down ; and in all parts women are now speaking to 
women of the love of that Saviour whose tender com- 
6 


82 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


passion to them awakens often the most touching sur¬ 
prise as ,well as joy. 

“ That he should have spoken so to a woman /” 
has been again and again the exclamation of some 
poor crushed soul sufficiently awake to feel the misery 
of her state. 

We thankfully acknowledge that what we have 
been saying of our Society’s work and its present re¬ 
sults can be said of many similar agencies engaged 
in the same work and in the same spirit. We thank 
God for them all, and know well there is room for 
hundreds more of such. 

But we venture to mention, in behalf of this 
special one, two peculiar claims to general interest and 
sympathy. 

ist. Its being the earliest in the field, and the par¬ 
ent, so to say, of more recent ones. 

2nd. The extensive sphere covered by its agency, 
including full half the globe. 

To this we may add the very strict economy ob¬ 
served in all its arrangements. 

But our object is only to give a briel notice of 
what this agency has accomplished, and we would 
close by inviting all who are now doing the same work 
to unite with us in fervent thanksgivings to Him whose 
power has overcome such strongholds of evil, and to 
exclaim from the heart, “ What hath God wrought!” 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK 


83 


HISTORY OF WOMAN'S ORGANIZED 
MISSIONARY WORK AS PROMOTED 
BY AMERICAN WOMEN. 

BY MISS ELLEN C. PARSONS. 

When Columbus came to the Spanish court with 
his reasonable eloquence it fell on many indifferent or 
suspicious ears, but Isabella believed. “ Amid the gen¬ 
eral incredulity,” he says, “ the Almighty infused the 
Queen, my Lady, with a spirit of intelligence and 
energy, and while every one else expatiated on the 
inconvenience and cost she gave all the support in 
her power.” That country, which she cheered on an 
enthusiast to find, the women whose birthright it is 
have determined shall be preserved. Isabella pled 
with every fresh outgoing commander across the At¬ 
lantic that he would be pitiful to the poor slaves in 
the West Indies: in our time we have seen cultivated 
women go down themselves to the degraded black 
race, the abused red race, the scorned yellow race. 
The devout queen of the fifteenth century yearned to 
send the holy faith abroad and to save souls in India, 
China and Japan. Yes, lovely Isabella, you took the 
longest way round, but it was the shortest way home 
to the consummation of your wish. American women, 
rank upon rank, respond to your longing. They have 
torn off the fifteenth century clasp from your Bible 
and sent the Word of God to have free course in the 
real China, India and Japan. If, after four hundred 


8 4 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


years of heavenly training, she has developed anything 
in proportion to the goodness of her life on earth, it 
would rejoice Isabella more to-day to know that than 
to know the distinguished fact of a civilized world cele¬ 
brating the discovery with which her name is linked. 

The history of organized missionary work as pro¬ 
moted by women in this country is a history of a dis¬ 
ciplined army developed in place of volunteer pickets. 

Early Local There was a short and wavering picket 

Societies. line Q f WO men’s societies which ap¬ 
peared in advance of the main column, at Boston in 
1800; at New Haven in 1812; at New York city by 
1814; at Norwich, Conn., 1816; at*Tallmadge, Ohio, 
1816; at Derry, Pennsylvania, two years after; at Phil¬ 
adelphia, 1823; Bedford, New York, 1831; Newark, 
New Jersey, 1835; Washington, Pennsylvania, the 
same year; Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1838; Rock¬ 
ford, Illinois, the same year; Sutton, Vermont, 1847; 
Baltimore, Maryland, 1848. Some of these pioneers 
never lowered their colors but lived to celebrate their 
jubilee, and when the modern movement began they 
were the first to come forward, with their old banners 
flying, to constitute the nuclei of the more comprehen¬ 
sive Woman’s Boards. Early in the century, Cent 
Societies (sometimes pathetically named “ Female Cent 
Societies ”) were general in New England and sporadic 
in the Middle States ; one such in Sewickly, Pennsyl¬ 
vania, in 1830, and another in New London, Pennsyl¬ 
vania, as late as 1832 sent contributions to the Presby¬ 
terian Board of Foreign Missions. The New Hamp¬ 
shire Cent Institution, founded in 1804, is with us still. 
During 86 years it has contributed $120,000 to home 
missions, besides accumulating a fund of $12,000. 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 


85 


Nothing but the grit of the granite hills could have 
kept alive a society so loosely organized, having mem¬ 
bers in 105 churches, only one officer, and never hold¬ 
ing a meeting for 76 years. After 1812, “ Ladies’ Associ¬ 
ations ” multiplied, and by 1839, 680 such were collect¬ 
ing funds for the American Board of Foreign Missions. 

The history of this woman’s missionary movement 
is a history of holy fellowship that was impossible to 
the ancient world. 11 overlooks denominational bounda¬ 
ries ; the active missionary spirits in different branches 
of the church are those who are closest together in 
Christian sympathy. No ocean can affect this tie. A 
British sister has but to step into one of our Mission 
Rooms and inquire for a leaflet, or bring a message 
into our meetings, and we recognize at once the bond 
of fellowship in a sacred cause. What did the Aspasias, 
the Alcinoes or Penelopes of old Greece, whose very 
goddesses lived in envy and jealousy of one another, 
know of such comradery and enthusiasm between 
women? It could never have drawn the breath of 
life except in the atmosphere of Christianity. 

This history is a record of women called forth from 
the conservatism in which they were entrenched. Our 
English and Scotch sisters were twenty years in ad¬ 
vance of us in organized missionary work. (We have 
caught up with them since.) There was a terrifying 
word abroad, and every self-respecting woman shud¬ 
dered at the thought of “ come-outism.” Then there 
was the conservatism of the church, for the new version 
of Psalm 68: 11 was not yet revealed. The story is 
given as authentic of a pastor in Michigan who insisted 
on being always present in the women’s meetings: “ No 
one knew what they would pray for, if left alone.” “ I 


86 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


cannot recommend,” said the venerable Dr. Anderson 
of the American Board to his associate, Rev. N. G. 
Clark, “ I cannot recommend bringing the women into 
this work; but you are a young man, go on and do it 
if you can.” It is safe to say that, without encourage¬ 
ment from such secretaries as Dr. Clark and others of 
like spirit, the history which this occasion calls for 
would have been far other and briefer than it is. 

Early Sacrifices for But did deVOUt women of the 
Missions. church wait for the advantages of gen¬ 
eral organization before attempting missionary work ? 
By no means. From the first they were offering per¬ 
sonal service, gifts, prayers. The first ship that carried 
American missionaries to the heathen world bore away 
Harriet Newell and Ann Haseltine Judson. In 1817 
two unmarried ladies were teaching among the North 
American Indians, and by 1880, 104 had been sent to 
the different tribes by a single Board. For forty years 
before the modern movement the silent partners in the 
hardships of the missionary cabin on the frontier were 
recognized, if unnamed, heroines of the church. This 
was the era of the universal sewing - society and the 
home-missionary box. Before railroads, in the days of 
canal-boats, when postage was twenty-five cents and 
purchasing by sample through the mail was yet unin¬ 
vented; in those days when Daniel Webster was in the 
habit of referring to a trip to Pittsburgh, Pa., as “ my 
visit to the West”—oh, then, great was the Box! 
Small need for the mothers in Israel to spend their time 
in surmising what would be acceptable, as they gathered 
round to pack it, for, after perhaps a decade of years 
since she went out from the East with her bridal trous¬ 
seau, at a distance of, it may be, 300 miles from the 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 


87 


nearest trading post, and the frontier cabin filling with 
little heads all the while, what was there, that fingers 
could make, which the missionary mother did not need ? 
No small contribution of sympathy, constancy and sub¬ 
stantial aid did a generation of women put into those 
boxes. Occasionally a brother started for the frontier 
clad in the suit of homespun which their hands had made 
from the raw product of the flax field and sheep’s back. 
Beyond computation were the pairs of socks they knit 
and sent after the boxes, or, when little money was in 
circulation, turned into cash in the East. The early 
pages of the treasurers’ books of every missionary soci¬ 
ety in this country record our grandmothers’ tithes of 
self-denial and plain toil. 

On page 159 of the “ Panoplist,” published in Bos¬ 
ton in 1813, appears the following letter, addressed to 
the Treasurer of the American Board : 

Bath, N. H., August 17, 1813. 

Dear Sir:—M r. M- will deliver $177 into your hands. 


The items are as follows: 

From an obscure female who kept the money for many 
years, waiting for a proper opportunity to bestow it 

upon a religious object- $100 00 

From an aged woman in Barnet, Vt., being the avails 

of a small dairy the past year- 50 00 

From the same being, the avails of two superfluous gar¬ 
ments-i- 10 00 

From the Cent Society in this place, being half their 

annual subscription- 11 00 

My own donation, being the sum hitherto expended in 
ardent spirits in my family, but now totally discon¬ 
tinued-—- 5 00 

From a woman in extreme indigence. 1 00 

Total..-- $177 00 


The same Board in 1813 also received its first 










88 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 

legacy, $345 83, left by Sally Thomas, a domestic, 
whose wages had never exceeded fifty cents a week; 
and, two years after, the largest legacy received for 
many years, $30,000, from Mrs. Norris of Salem, Mass. 
By faith, ladies of Brookline, Mass., made regular con¬ 
tributions for the work of the gospel in Japan while as 
yet that country was sealed against foreigners. The 
$600 which they placed in the treasury had become, 
with its accruing interest, $4,104.23 by the time the 
American Board was ready to send its first missionaries 
to Japan, and was used for that purpose. 

Glancing down the columns of the “ Missionary 
Reporter,” published in 1830, one discovers that pas¬ 
tors were often made life members of the Board of Mis¬ 
sions by ladies of their congregations. Interspersed 
among gifts from the “ Female Benevolent Society” (a 
very common designation), the “ Female Association,” 

“ Young Ladies,” from “ Miss B-’s scholars,” “ Two 

little girls,” “Widow Fulton,” and (rare) “Female 
Praying Society,” one finds frequent gifts from individ¬ 
ual women, their names for the most part being sup¬ 
pressed, while that of the transmitting pastor is given 
in full,, as: “ From a female friend of missions per 
Rev.” So-and-so; “ Donation from a lady; ditto from 

a poor woman, by Rev. -.” There was another 

species of gift essentially womanlike, and characteristic 
of the past rather than the present: it was the gem 
loosened from the finger, the heirloom, the souvenir, 
the memorial of a child, the token found in the purse 
of a dead friend, the piece of family plate, like a certain 
memorable silver coffee-pot, the offering of a Connec¬ 
ticut parsonage. The latter went to one missionary 
meeting and the mothers dropped in their silver 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 89 

coins ;* after fifty years it went to another meeting, and 
the daughters put in their bank bills;*)* and now it has 
come to the World’s Fair to prompt a generous gift 
once more. The money value of such relics was not 
commensurate with the devotion which they illustra¬ 
ted—perhaps the treasurer regarded them askance; 
but, after all, these trinkets shine down the years, like 
Isabella’s jewels, with a glow of womanly sincerity, the 
evidence of woman’s resourcefulness. 

But all these gifts were transmitted uneconomically. 
Local societies were inadequate. Prayer for missions 
more precious and availing was never breathed, but it 
rose isolated. It lacked the social element and needed 
quickening through knowledge. The time came when 
a new order was demanded. The lamp of woman’s 
love would always have burned on within the church. 
Always individual hearts would have been loyal to 
missions. Local societies would have continued to 
spring up and effect more than individuals, and, like 
their predecessors, few would have survived an ephe¬ 
meral life. But without a specific call and a new meth¬ 
od the mass of women in the church would never have 
been sufficiently informed upon missions nor sufficiently 
in touch with them to make many sacrifices for them. 

What was it that shook the Church, roused the 
women to united, systematic, concentrated action, that 
moved on and on, a compelling force, until we now 
have in this country the spectacle of hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of women, representing every branch of the 
Christian Church, banded together in chartered socie¬ 
ties and disbursing from one to one-and-a-half millions 
of dollars every year? Only one other movement, 

* Amounting to $300. t $ 5 °°- 


9 o 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


that of the Temperance Union, compares with it in 
numbers and moral power. Whence came that power¬ 
ful voice which evoked so much energy and action ? 
It was not patriotism warning of the menace in an in¬ 
coming tide of immigrants ; that came later. It was 
not national remorse demanding reparation for the ex¬ 
iled Indian. It was not even the last command of 
Jesus, “ Disciple all nations,” like a clarion call to the 
conscience. It was a human cry appealing expressly 
to woman’s tenderness, and it pierced her heart. It 
sounded out from black heathenism, ages old, lost, vast, 
awful—the heart-break of motherhood, the stifled cry 
of distorted childhood; this was what happy women 
heard in their happy, protected homes. 

“ Are there any female men among you to come 
and teach us ?” asked a group of Chinese women 
twenty-nine years ago of the American missionary. 
“ You must send us single women,” wrote the wife of 
the Methodist missionary at Bareilly, India, and she 
painted the picture of zenana life. David Abeel came 
home on purpose to make English-speaking women 
understand in what bondage and despair their oriental 
sisters were. Women, and only women, could meet 
the need. Something less strenuous might have caught 
the ear, but it required a call just so terrible, importu¬ 
nate, so shut up to woman, to fasten irresistibly upon 
her heart. 

How societies have developed that sprang into 
being from this motive, and with the aim to answer this 
call, is matter of history, to be found in printed annual 
reports (many of them thick pamphlets) of thirty-three 
separate Boards or Societies, representing twenty dif¬ 
ferent branches of the church, in our country. An 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 


9 1 


extended account may also be found in the “ Encyclo¬ 
pedia of Missions,” published in 1891. 

Organized missionary work, as promoted by Amer¬ 
ican women, practically began in 1861 with the Union 
Society in New York city. It was founded by Mrs. 
Doremus. “While others expatiated on the inconve¬ 
nience and cost, if not the fanaticism of such a project, 
she, like Isabella, believed in things not seen, and 
acted with an “ intelligence and energy ” inspired from 
above. 

Just at this time the Civil War broke out in the 
Republic, and it seems hardly necessary to remind 
ourselves how, for the five years that followed, the lei¬ 
sure of patriotic women was absorbed in equipping 
regiments, in administering soldiers’ hospitals, or in 
Sanitary Commission service. It was a training-school, 
and the end of the war found many women who had 
learned to cooperate with others in work, to bear re¬ 
sponsibility, to value method, and whom the war had 
left with more power than ever to bless others, and 
at the same time with fewer personal claims upon them. 
Much of this training was providentially turned into the 
channel of missions. 

The Union Society was independent of denomina¬ 
tion and composed of members from six branches of 
the church. It stood alone for seven years; then Con¬ 
gregational Church women organized boards at Boston 
and Chicago to work on church lines and in cooperation 
with the general Board already existing. This thought 
communicated itself; the torch was quickly carried 
from one church altar to another. Now began the 
massing of forces which should be as much more effec¬ 
tive than the old order as the onset of an army is supe- 


92 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


rior to the desultory firing of a picket guard. Distin¬ 
guished authorities have expressed their estimate of 
the value of this movement. 

At a meeting of the Woman’s Society of the Prot- 
Advantages of estant Episcopal Church, held in Chi- 
Orgamzation. ca g Q [ n 1886, Bishop Doane spoke as 
follows: “ The two principles of this whole work are 
loving organization and organized love .... The 
two things need to be together. Unloving organiza¬ 
tion is dead machinery, a steamless engine, a windmill 
in the dog-days, a water-wheel in a dried-up stream; 
and unorganized love is a spring freshet, a tidal wave. 
The one is dry and stiff and hard, the other is gush¬ 
ing and sentimental and short-lived. But organized 
love and loving organization, which are the essential 
and characteristic features of this Auxiliary, have in 
them the power of an endless life. When you add 
to this the value of associated and directed work, and 
remember how these women have touched every class 
and condition of men; and add to this the value of 
their Quiet Days and Conferences, you can perhaps 
begin to estimate the value of what has been done.” 

Rev. F. F. Ellin wood, D. D., Secretary of the 
Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church 
(North), is accustomed in his public addresses to di¬ 
rectly connect the beginnings and progress of the 
women’s societies with the Student Volunteer Move¬ 
ment. He points out that 25 years ago our Christian 
women began to carry foreign missions into the home, 
to the fireside, and that, unitedly in social meetings 
and alone in the closet, they have all these years since 
been pouring out prayer for this cause; and now here 
are the living answers: young men and maidens in 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 


93 


their teens and early twenties offering themselves for 
foreign service. “ If the women’s societies had not 
done another thing,” says Dr. Ellinwood, “ this is ten 
thousand times worth all their efforts.” And where 
such seers on the watch-towers have discerned general 
value the women themselves have a thousand times 
testified to personal blessings: to deliverance from 
frivolous occupations; to enlargement in narrow cir¬ 
cumstances ; to joy in use of talents shaken from the 
napkin. A Canadian delegate to the London Confer¬ 
ence in 1890 said, “ It is sometimes claimed that we 
(women) are much disposed to talk and not always to 
talk wisely. We have not always had very great 
things to talk about; but now we have something wor¬ 
thy our time and trouble.” 

The track of the societies is marked by intellectual 
and spiritual growth of the members. There has been 
a steady evolution from the timid objection to read a 
letter in public, or hold an office, to the best utterances 
of gifted and devout women. There has been a steady 
development in the conception of the scope of mission¬ 
ary work. For example: from (1) interest in “one 
child” whose photograph we must own and whose 
conversion must be assured in advance, to (2) a “schol¬ 
arship”; (3) a “share in a school”; (4) (coming, if not 
already attained), a “ share in the educational work of 
a mission.” 

Every one will admit that these results at home, 
as well as all that has been accomplished on the field, 
have been immeasurably greater with the stimulus and 
momentum of concerted action than if every individual 
had acted alone. Take the matter of contributions. 
Though, as we have seen, there were always women 


94 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


givers to missions, is it not true that, in a former gen¬ 
eration, the majority of the wives sat at one end of the 
pew and beheld their husbands at the other end drop¬ 
ping the family contribution into the passing box, com¬ 
fortably free themselves from either responsibility or 
motive for self-denial? Through participating in the 
direction of missionary work multitudes of women have 
acquired the sense of responsibility, and give their 
money with the feeling of a shareholder. Without the 
Society and the appointed solicitor much would be lost 
both to meetings and the treasury. The interested wo¬ 
man goes to the uninterested woman and brings her 
to the Auxiliary. She, comes and bears her part, be¬ 
cause she is invited. Add to this that the Society has, 
by precept and pledges, cultivated systematic and Bib¬ 
lical giving, and we may reasonably claim that the 
pronounced aim, “ to secure funds which would not 
otherwise be given,” has been to a great extent fulfilled. 
This is the opinion held by church boards and by lead¬ 
ing business men connected with them. This training 
of women to give and interesting them in something 
worthy of their gifts came none too soon, for the last 
quarter century has seen an enormous advance in this 
country in the amount of property that has come un¬ 
der the absolute control of Christian women. 

Date of the The organization of these societies 

Societies. occurred, in the order of time, as follows: 

1861. Woman’s Union Missionary Society, New York. 

1868. Woman’s Board of Missions (Boston), Congregational 

Church. 

1868. Woman’s Board of the Interior (Chicago), Congregational 

Church. 

1869. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (Boston), Methodist 

Episcopal Church, North. 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 


95 

1870. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (Philadelphia), Pres¬ 
byterian Church, North. 

1870. Woman’s Board of Missions of the Northwest (Chicago), 
Presbyterian Church, North. 

1870. Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions (New York), Presby¬ 

terian Church, North. 

1871. Woman’s Auxiliary to the Board of Missions (New York), 

Protestant Episcopal Church. 

1871. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (Boston), Baptist 
Church, Northern Convention. 

1871. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the West (Chi¬ 
cago), Baptist Church, Northern Convention. 

1871. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of Northern New 
York (Albany), Presbyterian Church, North. 

1871. Woman’s Board of Missions of the Pacific Islands (Hono¬ 
lulu), Congregational Church. 

1873. Woman’s Missionary Society, Free Baptist Church. 

1873. Woman’s Occidental Board of Foreign Missions (San 
Francisco), Presbyterian Church, North. 

1873. Woman’s Board of the Pacific (San Francisco), Congrega¬ 

tional Church. 

1874. Woman’s Mite Missionary Society, African Methodist Epis¬ 

copal Church. 

1875. Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions (New York), Re¬ 

formed (Dutch) Church in America. 

1875. Woman’s Board of Missions, Christian (Disciples) Church. 
1875. Woman’s Missionary Association, United Brethren in 
Christ. 

1875. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of California, Bap¬ 
tist Church, Northern Convention. 

1877. Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions of the Southwest 

(St. Louis), Presbyterian Church, North. 

1878. Woman’s Missionary Society (Nashville), Methodist Epis¬ 

copal Church, South. 

1879. Woman’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the 

General Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church. 

1879. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, Methodist Protes¬ 

tant Church. 

1880. Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions, Cumberland Presby¬ 

terian Church. 

1881. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Union, of Friends. 


96 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 

1883. Woman’s General Missionary Society (Xenia, Ohio), Uni¬ 
ted Presbyterian Church. 

1883. Woman’s Missionary Society, Evangelical Association 

(German Churches) of North America. 

1884. Woman’s Missionary Union, Southern Baptist Convention. 
1884. Woman’s Board of General Conference, Seventh-day Bap¬ 
tist. 

1888. Woman’s Board of the North Pacific (Oregon), Presbyte¬ 
rian Church, North. 

1888. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of Oregon, Baptist 

Church, Northern Convention. 

1889. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (Boston), Reformed 

Episcopal Church. 


A general Woman’s Board is now found in nearly 
every leading denomination of Christians, the chief 
exception being that of the Presbyterian church in the 
South. This has, however, the potentiality of a strong 
organization in 729 societies existing in as many con¬ 
gregations. They are directly auxiliary to the Board 
of that church, and have been forming since 1874. 

All these different organizations work with vary- 
Variety in Method, mg methods, each according to the 
Unity of Aim. g en ius of the church it represents. 
While the majority of them sustain missionaries ap¬ 
pointed by the church board, or at most only “ recom¬ 
mended” from themselves, Methodist women, the 
Friends, and of course the Union Society are account¬ 
able to no Board above them. While the Methodist 
Society (in the North) sends out only unmarried wo¬ 
men most societies adopt some wives as well, and the 
Christian Woman’s Board enrolls more men than wo¬ 
men missionaries. In auxiliaries of the Methodist Prot¬ 
estant Church in West Virginia men were appointed 
officers because women could not be induced to serve. 
But, with divergence in method, all the societies have 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 


97 


the same aim: looking abroad, to carry the gospel 
where, without women, it cannot be efficiently carried ; 
looking homeward, to give every woman in every par¬ 
ish a chance to share in the evangelization of the world. 
In nearly every society a membership fee is required, 
and. in all, labor and responsibility are diffused down 
from officers of the Board through smaller organiza¬ 
tions called “ Branches,” “ Presbyterial Societies,” etc., 
to the local “ Parish ” or “ Auxiliary ” society. All of 
them hold meetings to transact business, for their own 
spiritual good, to pray for missions, and to spread in¬ 
formation upon the subject. All avail themselves of 
the printing press and annually scatter broadcast 
“ Like leaves of the forest when summer is green,” 
millions of pages in reports, mission lessons, calendars 
of prayer, leaflets, newspaper columns and magazines 
for young and old. Of the latter, the three largest, 
“ Woman’s Work for Woman,” “ The Heathen Wo¬ 
man’s Friend,” and “The Helping Hand,” have re¬ 
spectively 18,000, 21,000, and 23,000 subscribers. All 
these societies undertake to train the children to mis¬ 
sionary service, and the talent and ingenuity expended 
in providing programmes for their meetings, opening 
channels for their self-denial and encouraging their 
zeal, and the solid results of this outlay, constitute an 
important chapter in the history of missionary effort. 
Through one children’s paper $8,000 were raised last 
year for a Chinese Home. The Treasury of one Board 
receives about $40,000 annually from children and 
young people. 

Last year these 33 societies combined were rep¬ 
resented by 1,051 missionaries. The 
Summaries. g reater num ber of them were teachers 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


98 

of schools, many were engaged in evangelistic work, 
and 65 were physicians (this year the number is in¬ 
creased to 70), graduated with full diplomas. Almost 
every society sends out at least one woman physician 
to the field. The Seventh Day Baptists have one; the 
United Presbyterians have two; the United Brethren in 
Christ, with an auxiliary membership of only 7,000, 
have three physicians; the Congregational Church has 
seven; the Baptist Church (Northern Convention) has 
twelve; the Methodist Episcopal Society (North), the 
noble pioneer in this direction, has fourteen ; and the 
Presbyterian Church (North) with her 21 skilled wo¬ 
men, every one at her post (and two more with pas¬ 
sage engaged for India), has at present outrun any 
other single society in the world. In not less than 70 
hospitals and dispensaries, nursing, medicine and sur¬ 
gery are administered by these American women, with 
a yearly result of from 5,000 to 25,000 patients in each, 
and incalculable relief of suffering. 

A total of more than 2,000 schools, of which about 
175 are boarding, or high schools, or colleges for girls; 
a total, so far as reported, of 76,000 pupils, of 1,500 
native assistants employed, represent Christian agen¬ 
cies created and sustained by the women’s societies. 
In addition to these larger items they have aided in 
building and furnishing homes for missionary children, 
missionary residences and sanitariums, orphanages, 
training-schools for nurses, leper and other asylums ; 
they have established scholarships, medical classes and 
industrial plants in connection with schools; have 
translated the Bible, school-books, tracts and hymns 
into foreign languages, and printed them; have built 
boats for African and Siamese rivers and South Pacific 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 


99 


seas; have published Marathi, Hindustani, Tamil, Ja¬ 
panese, Romanized Chinese, and Mexican newspapers; 
have met all expenses at home, and in many cases paid 
a given per cent, of their receipts into the treasury of 
the Church Board for contingent expenses connected 
with their own work. The whole amount contributed 
for these purposes for 1892-93 was $1,475,933. 

Take a single illustration of how these contribu¬ 
tions have been increasing. In 1870, as the treasurer 
of a great Board said, “ there rolled into the treasury a 
little cake of barley bread labelled, ‘ Woman’s Work 
for Woman, $7,000.” The speaker referred to the first 
contribution under the new movement from Presbyte¬ 
rian women of the North. This year that barley cake 
has become a wheaten loaf of more than $300,000. 

It has been estimated that the gift of American 
women to non-evangelized countries since the Union 
Society took up its first collection would not be repre¬ 
sented by anything under thirteen and a half millions 
of dollars. 

Modem movement The genesis of this woman’s rais¬ 
in Home Missions, sionary movement was foreign mis- 

sions; but everything that has been said relating to 
expansion in that direction, the manner of growth, the 
conduct of societies, the spirit called forth, applies 
equally to home missions endeavor. For, when Chris¬ 
tian women began to save their heathen sisters, was 
there a general stampede from the churches to Asia 
and Africa ? Not at all. 

“ The lights that shine farthest 
Shine brightest near home.” 

Just as might be expected, when that effectual cry from 
out the darkness probed woman’s'selfishness and broke 


100 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


up the fountains of her heart, she was ready, as never 
before, to acknowledge every claim. Now began more 
intelligent and aggressive effort in Home Missions. 
The old-fashioned sewing-society could not answer the 
requirements of the nineteenth century. Now school- 
houses must be built, and parsonages, and chapels. 
Methodist women hold property in schools and Indus¬ 
trial Homes in this country to the value of $225,000. 
The Presbyterian Church (North) holds property in 
buildings and real estate, from North Carolina to Alas¬ 
ka, amounting to a half million dollars, all of which has 
been created or acquired through the Women’s Home 
Missions Committee since 1878. 

Now scholarships must be established and teachers 
sent forth and maintained in flocks to the colored peo¬ 
ple of the South, on an enlarged scale to the Indian, to 
the congested centres of foreign immigrants, to the poor 
whites and the Chinese. The Congregational Church 
has sent three thousand women to teach the Freedmen 
since the war. It has two hundred men in the United 
States preaching the gospel in foreign languages, who 
are mainly supported by the women’s societies. While 
the times demand statesmanship to handle “frontier 
work,” “ Indian rights,” “ the foreign problem,” “ the 
Southern problem,” “ the Mormon problem,” the wo¬ 
men are steadily helping to solve these problems. 
With “ Our land for Christ ” as their watchword, and 
“ America must be saved by Americans ” inscribed on 
their banners, they have gone into Utah resolving that 
“ every foot of the 350,000 square miles covered by the 
Mormon Church ” shall be “ redeemed to Christ.” In 
about fifty separate towps in Utah they have planted 
their common schools/. ‘The teacher, always a woman, 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. IOi 

often the only Christian in the place, fills the office of 
pastor, teacher and superintendent, if not doctor, un¬ 
dertaker and dressmaker also. 

Where is that banner not flying? 

The itinerant missionary woman has 
been introduced, a reclaiming force, among the deserted 
farms of New Hampshire. The evening lamp of the 
missionary’s home shines across the Florida swamp, 
and up on the farthest parallel towards the pole stands 
the royal gift of a woman’s hand, a school for Alaskan 
children. Not only the ordinary field of former years 
must be worked, but extraordinary situations must be 
opened up to gospel light and atmosphere. Sunday- 
schools must be planted in clefts of the mountains and 
among the scattered sheep in the sage brush. Chris¬ 
tian investments must follow the trail of booming towns. 
The missionary must be on hand with his sermon the 
first Sunday after Oklahoma is entered. His wife is 
there too, and it is not long before she is leader of a 
boys’ club who are put upon their honor to neither 
swear nor use tobacco in her presence. The women 
organize their “ paper mission,” and send millions of 
newspapers and pictures where they cannot penetrate 
themselves—to lighthouses, prisons, the military post, 
the lumberman’s camp, the dug-out, and the prairie 
schooner. People in the far West have gone fourteen 
miles this Columbian year to borrow old magazines. 
And still, with all their greater undertakings, the wo¬ 
men continue to fill up niches in mission needs. Their 
boxes continue to supplement meagre salaries. Single 
parishes send twenty-five and thirty in a season. The 
auxiliaries of a single society forward 80, ioo, or 135 
annually. The Woman’s Auxiliary of the Episcopal 


102 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


Church reported 4,255 boxes sent to their missions in 
1892. They represented $197,724 in cash. Every 
year bells must be set ringing in new prairie churches, 
and freight cars carry west and southward Sunday- 
school libraries and chapel organs. Here goes a horse, 
there a saddle or a tent. Women of the Reformed 
(Dutch) Church sent seven communion sets to feeble 
churches last year. Monuments to the dead are dis¬ 
placed by memorials which bless the living. Indus¬ 
trial departments are established at great outlay in 
schools for boys and girls. Every facility which the 
mind can devise, from a bath to a hundred-thousand- 
dollar building, if it will promote true citizenship and 
Christianity in our country, is laid claim to by Home 
Missions. One of the mottoes of this patriotic army is, 
“The foreigner must be Americanized,” and that calls 
for the Training-school, where workers are practised 
both in the English tongue and in whatever speech is 
native to the foreigner’s transatlantic home. Such a 
school is that of the Baptist Society in Chicago, where 
young women of ten races are in training to teach, each 
in her own tongue. In Springfield, Mass., is an insti¬ 
tution, conducted in the French lan- 

How and Whom. 

guage, where young women as well as 
men are trained for gospel work among that great 
deposit of French Canadians which has lately been pre¬ 
cipitated into New England. Other training-schools, 
on an English basis only, are well known. The Meth¬ 
odist (Episcopal) women of the South opened one at a 
cost of $75,000 in 1892. The Methodist women in the 
North have erected eleven Deaconess’ Homes in as 
many cities, as centres of work. 

Every class must be sought out and benefited. 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 


103 


The emigrant girl must be met on the wharf when she 
lands. The good Samaritan must pour oil into the 
wounds of the Alaskan girl fallen among thieves. The 
Huguenot blood and the Covenanter blood in the 
mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Caro¬ 
lina must be searched out and put to school. There 
must be Sunday-schools for the cowboys, with first- 
class organ playing, and the Jews—even the Jews— 
must not be overlooked any longer. One woman, 
single-handed, carries on a struggling school of Spanish 
children in New York city for years, till friends come 
to its rescue, and now there is a church of fifty-six mem¬ 
bers, the pastor reporting them as “ fifty-six facts 
among a community of Spaniards large enough for five 
Madrids.” Similar efforts are put forth for Italian la¬ 
borers along the beds of great railway lines and for 
Slovack miners in Pennsylvania, and if anybody is 
generally left out he is specially gathered in under the 
term “ neglected populations,” which is one of the very 
shibboleths of Home Mission speech in our day. 

Women undertook, at the outset, both Home and 
Foreign Missions in several branches of the church; 
in others the old method of aiding Home Missions, al¬ 
ready doing good service, was slower to give place to 
the modern society. Organization in the interests of 
Home Missions occurred as follows: 


Baptist Church (North) in-1876 

Baptist Church (South)_ 1888 

Baptist Free Church. 1873 

Baptist Seventh-Day Church_1885 

Date of Home Christian Church- 1890 

Missions Societies Congregational Church State Unions. 1883 
in th. Churches. Episcopal Church _ j8 7 , 

German Church (Evangelical Association)-1884 









104 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


Lutheran Church-.... -1879 

Methodist Episcopal Church (North)-1880 

Methodist (Episcopal) Church, South-1878 

Methodist Protestant-1893 

Presbyterian Church (North)-1878 

Presbyterian Church (Cumberland)-1880 

Presbyterian (United) Church-1883 

Reformed (Dutch) Church---1875 

United Brethren in Christ..—1875 


These societies are working among forty tribes of 
Indians, and in nearly twenty European languages. 
The five largest of them are represented by 1,084 mis- 
sionaries and teachers, and the sum disbursed in 1892- 
93 by all these societies, so far as reported, was $1,100,- 
000 in money, outside of other gifts. 

But, it is time to ask, with all this outside demand 
upon Christian women did the local church die of neg¬ 
lect ? Were Bible-classes vacated by teachers, bed¬ 
sides deserted by nurses? Was family religion no 
more cultivated ? Carried away with this enthusiasm 
for the black race, the red race and the yellow, for mis¬ 
sions in Colorado and missions in Japan, did Dorcas 
and Tryphosa now cease to lodge strangers, to wash 
the saints’ feet, to relieve the afflicted ? 

By no means. How much was heard of City 
Missions before the foreign missionary wave touched 
. our shores? A priori , city missions 
were first, tor unless we love the broth¬ 
er that we have seen how can we love him that we 
have not seen ? But in the order of spiritual sequences 
it was after God pressed home upon us the radical 
truth that he had made all nations of one blood, and if 
we love him we must love our brother to the ends of 
the world , that the light of city missions blazed out from 











ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 


105 


a more than a seven-branched candlestick. Now be¬ 
gan the flower missions, fresh-air funds, girls’ “ Friend¬ 
ly’s,” midnight missions, King’s Daughters, boot-black 
brigades, free kindergartens, Young Women’s Chris¬ 
tian Associations, day nurseries, night schools, socie¬ 
ties for protection against cruelty to children and 
animals, and all those specialized forms of rescue work 
which characterize our time, which women always aid, 
and often both conduct and maintain. It is a matter 
of frequent observation that the Bible was never so 
thoroughly studied in our country as it is now, and to 
this result every earnest woman in every auxiliary has 
contributed her share, for that earnestness has been fed 
on the Word of God and fanned by the Spirit of God. 
Beautiful is the interplay between departments of this 
work. It is all so informed by one aim and spirit that 
it is perfectly easy for the same woman to have place in 
her heart for all missions in their different phases. 

An historical survey like this may seem open to 
the charge of boastfulness. God forbid that we should 
in anywise boast. In all things we have come short. 
Have any women on earth received so much from 
God, do any owe so much to his dear Son, as we of 
America ? But, listening to summaries, we are apt to be 
Proportion Of Wo- deceived. Totals sound large. When 
men Enlisted. we come to place facts in right propor- 

tion we are disillusionized. In what proportion are the 
women of our churches represented in these efforts ? 

“One-fourth of our half a million women,” say 
Methodists of the north; “ eighteen per cent, of adult 
women in yearly meetings,” say the Friends; “460 
auxiliaries out of 1,450 congregation—what of the 
other 1,000 congregations?” say the Lutherans; “con- 


io6 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


tributions from a little more than half our parishes,” 
say Episcopalians; “foreign missionary auxiliaries in 
two-thirds of our churches,” say Presbyterians in Penn¬ 
sylvania; “not more than one-sixth of our church 
members in any missionary work,” say Presbyterians 
of Oregon; “ one-eighth of our church members in 
twenty-two states enrolled in Home Missionary Socie¬ 
ty,” say Baptists of the North; “ one-sixth of our 
church women in foreign missionary membership,” say 
Congregationalists on the Atlantic seaboard; “less 
than one-sixth,” they say about Chicago; “five hun¬ 
dred dead societies,” reports one Board. But just 
because this muster of his handmaidens has been so 
reluctant and incomplete the name of the Lord is the 
more magnified in results achieved. In view of so 
much accomplished by such weak agencies we can 
only look up, and wonder, and adore. What blessing 
God could pour out, and what the victory would be, if 
instead of this fraction from our churches every woman 
in them would add the weight of her warmhearted de¬ 
votion to missionary service, can scarcely be con¬ 
ceived. 

Thus far this history has restricted itself to a re¬ 
view of Efforts; but, in closing, we cannot restrain one 
swift glance at Results. 

In our own country they are apparent. The record 

Results t ^ iem ls not con fi ne d to missionary 

magazines; it is in all the newspapers. 
The missionary woman labors under limitations in Ori¬ 
ental countries, and, especially if unmarried, must often 
endure to have her motives and conduct rest under the 
suspicions of degraded minds. But her peculiar arena 
is our dear land, where, even in rudest communities, the 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 107 

air breathes of chivalry towards motherhood and wo¬ 
manhood. The sun in its course looks down on no 
spot of earth where the opinions of good women and 
the resolute actions of good women have so much in¬ 
fluence on the public mind and public weal. Were all 
their active and aggressive part in philanthropic work 
to be suppressed to-day, not only would every Home 
Missionary Society be in despair but protest would 
arise from worldly men. It is more difficult to point 
to what is distinctively the fruit of woman’s work in 
missions at home than abroad because the peculiar 
barriers of the East are wanting here. Nowhere in our 
country is the ordained man prohibited from carrying 
the gospel into the home or pressing the claims of 
religion upon any individual. And yet that young 
colored woman at Augusta, Georgia, in charge of a 
school having eight assistant teachers and four hundred 
pupils; the Omaha Indian girl regularly graduated as 
Specimen Results a physician and practising among her 
m the united states. p e0 pj e . the Dakota women’s mission¬ 
ary societies and their notable offerings; the rescued 
Chinese slave-girl assisting, in the English language, at 
a corner-stone laying in San Francisco last July; twenty 
churches of converted Mormons born out of women’s 
schools—these are specimen fruits of what is not likely 
to be brought to perfection without a woman’s hand. 

But what of those farther shores ? Have the toils 
of all these societies at home and the sacrifices of our 
countrywomen been also blessed in the Turkish Em¬ 
pire, in Persia, India, Siam, China, Japan, Korea, 
Africa, and the islands of the sea ? There, results are 
farther out of sight than results at home; we must draw 
nearer to them. Yes, God has answered us with his 


108 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 

seal of approval. It is imprinted on the personal trans¬ 
formation from wild, unruly beings, such as met the 
first missionaries in Persia, to those dignified ladies 
who now conduct Quarterly Meetings on Oroomiah 
Plain and furnish columns to the mission paper. Travel¬ 
lers in Syria and Egypt tell us they are often able, by 
their faces, to select, out of a casual company whom 
they see, those women who have attended mission 
schools. A visitor in Mexico could scarce believe that 
the thoughtful-faced women in the mission congregation 
were of the same class as those she met on the plaza. 
Let a European light down upon any village in Asia 
Minor, or the Chinese Empire, and the tidiest house 
General Results there, with the cleanest tablecloth and 
Abroad. the most inviting bed, is the home 
of a mission-school graduate. The transformation' 
appears in the deaths they die; like the old Siamese 
woman, a few months ago, whispering “ My Sa¬ 
viour ” with her last breath; like the young wife 
on the Ogowe River, Africa, when heart and flesh 
failed, still resisting the witch doctor and charging 
her husband to be “ faithful to God.” These women 
are transformed by happiness. Christianity encourages . 
them, wakes their intellect, kindles aspiration, as well 
as offers peace. Where for thousands of years they 
have said, “We are donkeys,” a corps of intelligent 
teachers and evangelists are now raised up. 

As women rise they bring the home up with them. 
A missionary of long experience points to the “ new 
affection and respect shown by husband and children 
towards Christian wives and mothers, because their 
religion has made them worthy of respect and affection 
which as heathen women they did not merit.” 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. IO9 

Without this woman’s work for woman, touching 
life at so many and such sensitive points, some missions 
would have been a failure. The American mother and 
her babe have bridged the chasm between the dreaded 
foreigner and the Korean mother’s heart. Church 
membership, which formerly preponderated entirely 
in favor of men, has in some older missions approached 
nearly to equalization. Among their trophies are wo¬ 
men who have borne persecution, made harder by their 
traditions for them than for men; and those who zeal¬ 
ously prosecute home missions, as among Gilbert Island 
women, and the Japanese who have been known to 
sell their dresses for the cause. They have their for¬ 
eign missionary heroines also, like Yona, the Harriet 
Newell of Zululand. 

Look at woman’s work for woman in Japan: 
prayer unions holding their annual meeting, attended 
by delegates from different cities, whose traveling ex¬ 
penses were paid by women of their respective church¬ 
es; a Japanese girl leaving a legacy of $65 to the 
school where she became a Christian; Bible women in 
demand beyond the supply, and the Japanese churches 
paying a part or all of their salary; a boys’ school 
begging for an American woman to teach them. “ Such 
deep Christian experience that,” as an Osaka mission¬ 
ary writes, “it seems impossible that they grew to 
womanhood in ignorance of Christ.” 

Look at woman’s work for women in India. It 
has found out the class resting under the heaviest 
curse, the widow, and lifted her to a place of honor. 
While Christian girls have been passing entrance ex¬ 
aminations to the University for twenty years, the first 
Mohammedan girl has matriculated this year. “ Chris- 


IIO 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


tian women,” Miss Thoburn says, “are much more 
prominent and important than Christian men. If they 
live in a village they are the only women there who can 
read and write. No others go to a place of worship 
with men. Their daughters go away to boarding- 
school and return to be consulted by their own fathers. 
When the Dufferin medical schools called for students 
three-fourths of those who came forward were Chris¬ 
tian girls.” Even indirect results begin to show them¬ 
selves on the far horizon. The purdah is drawn aside 
for a fUe day at the Exposition in Calcutta. A class of 
barbarous midwives study anatomy with a Philadelphia 
graduate. An appeal against child-marriage is sent to 
the English Parliament. Brahmo Somaj women gather 
together into a prayer-meeting at Lahore. “ It is your 
women and doctors that we are afraid of,” say the 
men of India. 

In Persia, the respectful term Khanum (Lady) is 
frequently applied to Christians by Persian men, but to 
Mohammedan women never. A priest asked a mis¬ 
sionary lady to offer prayer beside him at the burial of 
a child. When the American Mission was opened 
only two women in the whole country could read. At 
their Jubilee in 1885 the question was put, “ How many 
present can read?” and six hundred women rose to 
their feet. 

Look at woman’s work for women in China. A 
Canton girl, imitating her college sisters in England 
and America, takes the prize for Bible examination 
over the heads of all the competing pastors. Up in 
Shantung several women, without preacher, teacher or 
sexton, have maintained a house of worship and Sun¬ 
day service in their community for a period of years. 


ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 


Ill 


“ Direct work for women,” says a cautious missionary 
in that province, “ has contributed fully one-half to the 
improved sentiment towards foreigners.” “ It conveys 
the idea that they amount to something,” says another, 
“ sadly needed for those so near the vanishing point in 
social life. It is necessary to the stability of the family : 
when men become Christians and women adhere to 
heathenism husband and wife are at cross-purposes, 
and after a year or two of contest the husband surren¬ 
ders. The family can be won in no other way. There 
is a kind of fascination about the missionary lady ; 
these heathen women fairly run and troop around her, 
and when they are won the family becomes a fixed in¬ 
stitution in the church. I am of the opinion,” continues 
our missionary from North China, “ that for permanent 
hold of Christianity upon the people, work among wo¬ 
men is more important than among men. The request 
comes from all our stations, * Send us more ladies.’ ” 
Encouraged by such evidences as these, incited by 
gratitude and the promise of God’s Word, and sus¬ 
tained by the Spirit of God, the woman’s missionary 
societies propose to tarry not nor falter, but to hand on 
their work to children and children’s children, enjoin¬ 
ing upon them to save America, to save the world, and 
to be found so doing when our Lord shall come. 


112 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


ZENANA , BIBLE AND MEDICAL MISSIONS. 

BY LORD KINNAIRD. 

“ When I am gone,” said the late Lady Kinnaird, 
“ you will find ‘ India ’ engraven on my heart.” This 
was no expression of merely sentimental interest in a 
romantic enterprise. Lady Kinnaird worked and 
prayed and pleaded for India as few other women 
have done, and as the result of her interest in that 
mighty empires he founded the Zenana, Bible and Med¬ 
ical Mission, of which the good Earl of Shaftesbury 
did not hesitate to say that it was “ one of the best 
missions calculated for the purpose it has in view, ever 
conceived.” The Earl always felt that India had a 
special claim on English Christians. We too often 
forget that the women of India are not only our sisters 
but our fellow-subjects, and that while the total popula¬ 
tion of India is 287 millions, the number of Protestant 
Christians does not exceed three-quarters of a million. 
Is not this fact a trumpet-call to every true Christian 
heart ? Is it not a reproach for duty left undone in 
the past, and a call to earnest and definite effort in the 
future ? 

There are 139 millions of women and girls in 
India. Forty millions of them are shut up in Zenanas ; 
they are subjects of the Empress Queen whom we 
loyally serve, and yet how often do we give a thought 
to their moral welfare and spiritual enlightenment ? 
“ What is a Zenana ?” said a gentleman one day. “ I 


ZENANA AND MEDICAL MISSIONS. 113 

looked all over my atlas for such a place, and could n’t 
find it anywhere; but this may be because my copy is 
an old one.” Another interested inquirer said he had 
searched in vain for the Bishop of Zenana, but could 
find no diocese bearing the name. 

But what is a Zenana ? Briefly, it is that portion 
of an Indian gentleman’s house set apart for the wo¬ 
men. The imagination is apt to invest such a place 
with the gorgeous surroundings which are usually as¬ 
sociated with Indian wealth and rank. But the reality 
is in most cases dull and prosaic in the extreme. Instead 
of a mansion, think of a mud building, bare and uninvit¬ 
ing, probably the darkest and dirtiest part of the 
establishment. Do not imagine that the inmates are 
attired with oriental magnificence. They are poorly 
and plainly clad; they sit on the floor, and therefore 
but little furniture is needed, and the whole place is 
more suggestive of the hopeless seclusion of the prison 
than the social sunshine of the home. And in these 
dens forty millions of the women of India are kept! 
They have none of the joys of family life, for the wo¬ 
men never gather with husband and children. They 
are practically excluded from intercourse with the male 
portion of the household, and never do they hear the 
ringing laugh of happy childhood. “ Doomed to an 
enforced inferiority,” says one writer, referring to wo¬ 
man in the zenana, “ her life is without an inspiring 
purpose, and, as a consequence, it sinks to a drud¬ 
gery worse than the treadmill.” Woe betide the 
women when they become sick ! Then, of all times, 
we should expect a little kindly attention to be shown 
them. But the sufferers are relegated to some damp 
chamber, where they are left alone to die, often with- 
8 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


114 

out any tender ministries of loving hands to soothe 
and comfort their last hours. 

Is not the dull and cheerless existence of such 
women a living death ? First, they are severed from 
all social life; then the intellectual life is cut off, for 
books are almost unknown and the cultivation of any 
talent is never attempted. “ Education is good,” says 
the Hindoo, “just as milk is good ; but milk given to 
a snake becomes venom : so education to a woman be¬ 
comes poison.” And this pernicious logic is relent¬ 
lessly put into practice, with the result that the life of 
an Indian woman, unless she becomes a wife and the 
mother of a son—for a daughter is regarded as a 
curse—is nothing but a sad and sunless pilgrimage 
from an unhappy cradle to an unregretted grave. 

As for the religious life, with sorrow it must be 
admitted that our unhappy sisters sit in darkness and 
in the shadow of death. In gloom and despair they 
pray to their idols, and so terrible are some of their 
deities that children scream when they see the awful 
monsters. There is no sweet hour of family prayer, 
no tender petition whispered to “Our Father” in 
heaven, none of the cheering promises and inspiring 
thoughts of the Christian religion. Surely the dreary 
picture is an irresistible plea for the sympathy and help 
of Christian England! 

But there is a worse tale yet to be told—the sad 
story of the Hindoo widow. We naturally have a deep 
regard for the widow; her forlorn position, her sorrow 
and loneliness, excite our tenderest emotions. In India 
this is entirely reversed, and the poor widows are re¬ 
garded as being cursed by God. How England would 
ring out with a cry of righteous indignation if one 


ZENANA AND MEDICAL MISSIONS. 11 5 

who had been a faithful wife were confined in a prison, 
and exposed to every kind of abuse and indignity, 
simply because she was a widow! But in India, not 
one widow, but millions are so treated; and it is no 
exaggeration to say that in many cases their lot is far 
worse than that of a criminal in an English jail. Di¬ 
rectly a woman becomes a widow she is degraded to 
the lowest drudgery of the household; she must eat 
but one meal a day, and that only a dish of rice; twice 
a month she must fast for twenty-four hours, and her 
bed is on the floor. We must remember, also, that 
these poor prisoners are frequently mere children; that 
is the most terrible part of it. An aged man may 
have a child-wife. “ I can never remember,” said a 
little girl, “ the time when I was not a widow.” Ac¬ 
cording to the census of 1891, out of the vast number 
of widows under fifteen years of age (51 to every 
10,000 of the whole population), 33 per cent are 
widows under five years of age ! 

These facts are harrowing and unpleasant, but 
they ought to be more widely known. The govern¬ 
ment does but little to ameliorate the sufferings of our 
sisters. A male missionary is never allowed to enter 
a zenana. Consequently there is but one thing to be 
done: godly, gifted women, filled with the spirit of 
Christ and the “enthusiasm of humanity,” must go 
forth to minister to these sick and sorrowing ones, and 
by the light of the gospel transform the black night 
of oppression and suffering into the glad morning of 
freedom and happiness. 

Of the blessing which God has bestowed on the 
work, and the way in which difficulties, once apparently 
insuperable, have been rolled away, I have not space 


116 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 

to write. But this fact must be recorded—that the 
work is limited not so much by lack of opportunities 
as by lack of workers and means. Great good has 
been done by the native Bible-woman. As a native 
she can gain ready access to the family; her books 
and tracts are accepted; presently the word of God is 
introduced, read, and explained; questions are asked, 
interest is excited, and the hearts of many of India’s 
women open, like Lydia’s, to receive the word. Then 
the hospitals and jails are visited, and everywhere 
eager listeners are found. 

There is also the valuable influence of the nor¬ 
mal and day schools at work. The 1891 census returns 
have tabulated the statistics as to i28£ millions out of 
the total number of 139 millions of women, and of these 
(1281 millions) 99.4 are unable to read or write, and are 
not even learning to do so. In our schools the teach¬ 
ers are not content with imparting secular knowledge, 
they strive to win their pupils to Christ. This is one of 
the most hopeful features of the work; for if India is to 
become Christian it must be very largely through na¬ 
tive agencies. And the young people who go forth 
from these schools—their memories stored with gospel 
truth—will naturally be missionaries among their own 
people. 

Many a zenana, however, would remain for ever 
closed, even against the lady missionary, if it were not 
for the medical mission. All honor to the Christian 
lady doctors who take to the women of India not only 
medicine for the body but good news of the Great 
Physician who alone can cure the sin-sick soul. That 
their work is supremely necessary is proved by the 
fact that a medical man is seldom admitted to a zenana. 


ZENANA AND MEDICAL MISSIONS. 117 

On one occasion when a doctor asked to feel the pulse 
of a lady patient he was refused, but the suggestion 
was made that he should feel the pulse of one of the 
servants instead. In another instance the tongue of a 
lady had to be examined through an opening in a cur¬ 
tain. But when no one else can gain access the lady 
missionaries are freely admitted, and much good work 
is quietly and unostentatiously accomplished. 

It is interesting to know that the queen herself is 
deeply interested in the welfare of her Indian subjects. 
“ You are going to England,” said the Maharanee of 
Punnah to one of the lady agents of the Zenana Mis¬ 
sion, “ and I want you to tell our queen, and the men 
and women in England, what we women in the zenanas 
in India suffer when we are sick.” This touching mes¬ 
sage in due time reached the ears of our most gracious 
sovereign, and she remarked to her lady-in-waiting, 
“ I had no idea it was as bad as this : something must 
be done for these poor creatures;” adding, “ I wish it to 
be generally known that I sympathize with every effort 
made to relieve the suffering state of the women of 
India.” 

“ Something must be done.” That is the verdict of 
the queen, and it must also be the obvious conclusion 
of every woman who has a heart to sympathize with 
her oppressed and suffering sisters. Thank God, 
something is being done. The Zenana, Bible and Med¬ 
ical Mission has 73 European missionaries and assist¬ 
ants, 54 Bible-women, and 149 native Christian teach¬ 
ers and nurses. It sustains 67 schools with 2,554 pu¬ 
pils, and three normal schools with 115 students train¬ 
ing for mission work. Its hospitals and dispensaries at 
Lucknow, Benares and Patna are fully appreciated; in 


118 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 

1892, for instance, there were 10,500 patients, with 32,- 
500 attendances. But think how utterly inadequate 
this is among 139 millions of women and girls. Lon¬ 
don, with a population of only four millions, has far 
more Christian workers than the whole of India. The 
situation is so serious and the need so urgent that it is 
time some of us began to practise a little self-sacrifice 
in order to render prompt and liberal help. Such an 
effort may involve some trifling inconvenience, but it will 
bring an unfailing reward of genuine pleasure. 

The Queen of Sweden sold her diamonds to help 
in building a hospital for the poor, and while visiting 
the patients one day the tears of a poor woman fell 
upon her hands; as she looked at them she realized 
that God had given her, in those tears of gratitude, 
diamonds more precious than those she had parted 
with. Thousands of people are longing for happiness, 
and are busily engaged in pursuing the phantom of 
pleasure. Let them now enjoy the unspeakable luxury 
of doing good. No field of labor can be more suitable 
for Christian ladies than the alleviation of the sufferings 
of the women of India. The mothers of our land 
would do well to make this their special care. They 
know the blessings of home life in their own free, edu¬ 
cated, happy country. Let them never rest until their 
sisters, who pine and sigh, with stunted intellects and 
crushed hearts, in the zenanas of India, are rejoicing in 
the liberty and peace of Christianity. 


THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 119 


WOMAN'S WORK IN CONNECTION WITH 
THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 

BY CAROLINE WHYTE. 

To give anything like a complete or satisfactory 
sketch of Woman’s Work in connection with the Lon¬ 
don Missionary Society within the limits of time and 
space allotted to us would be impossible. 

In two years’ time from this date our Society will 
be celebrating its centenary, and it is hardly too much 
to say that its work among women in heathen lands 
stretches also as far back as the beginning of this cen¬ 
tury—manifestly too long a history to be condensed 
into ten minutes’ time. It has been truly said, “ Zena¬ 
na missions were actually commenced and carried on 
by the first missionary who had a wife of the right 
sort,” and the annals of our Society bear witness to the 
fact that in the early half of this century, as in all the 
days that have followed, our missionaries have for the 
most part had at their sides as fellow-laborers and help¬ 
meets “ wives of the right sort ”—women who by the 
grace of God have not only proved living witnesses of 
the elevating and sanctifying influences of Christianity 
upon womanhood, but who through the establishment 
of Christian homes in the midst of heathen surround¬ 
ings have afforded the best and most powerful proof pos¬ 
sible that the sweet fruits of joy, peace and love can only 
be fostered and grow to perfection in homes where 
Christ is acknowledged as supreme Lord and Master; 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


1 20 

where woman is enshrined in her true place as the 
centre of family influence, a centre from which will be 
radiated light, and self-sacrificing help to all within 
reach. It will be sufficient to name only such women 
as Mrs. Moffat, Mrs. Ellis, Mrs. Mullens, Mrs. Moult, 
Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Wardlaw, as 
types of the noble womanhood which has labored with 
devotion and self-sacrifice for Christ among their 
heathen sisters. These were all true pioneers of the 
work which during the last thirty years of this century 
has been more thoroughly organized, and has so won¬ 
derfully developed! 

Just in proportion to the zeal and energy put forth 
by the wives of our earlier missionaries did the impor¬ 
tance of the work among women in heathen homes be¬ 
come widened; and it soon became manifest that the 
task of educating and elevating them, of making known 
to them the knowledge of a Saviour’s love and bringing 
them out of the bondage of caste and superstition into 
the glorious liberty of the children of God, was a task 
utterly beyond the limited powers of time and strength 
at the disposal of even the most able and willing among 
missionaries’ wives. A special band of helpers was 
needed as their colleagues, who should be set apart ex¬ 
pressly for this work. Accordingly, at the 8ist anniver¬ 
sary meeting of our Society a resolution was passed ap¬ 
pointing fifteen ladies “ to cooperate with the directors in 
promoting the education and conversion of women and 
girls in heathen lands.” Since the autumn of that year 
(1875) this Ladies’ Committee has been steadily at 
work, and although at the close of the first ten years 
(i. e. } 1885) progress had been slow, and they could then 
report only twenty-seven ladies as having been sent out 


THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 121 


to the foreign mission field, yet substantial help had 
been given in the starting and support of girls’ schools 
in India, China, and Madagascar, and the number of 
native workers employed (i. e ., Bible-women, zenana 
teachers, school-teachers, etc.) was 226, while during 
the ten years ^14,000 had been specially collected for 
and expended entirely on work among women in the 
foreign field. 

During the last eight years the progress has been 
much more rapid and marked. We have to-day sixty- 
one ladies actually engaged in the work, and this num¬ 
ber will be increased to seventy-five before the close of 
this year, making in all more than 100 (103) who have 
been sent out since 1875. Of the twenty-eight names 
which no longer stand upon our roll, by far the larger 
number have become the wives of missionaries of our 
' own or other Societies and are still laboring zealously 
in the cause to which they consecrated their lives, while 
only three have exchanged the earthly for the heavenly 
home during these eighteen years. 

Our present actual band of workers is distributed 
over the field, which is the world, in the following pro¬ 
portions : 31 in India (15 in North India, 13 in South 
India, and 3 in Travancore), 20 in China, 6 in Mada¬ 
gascar, and 4 in the South Sea Islands. There has 
been a proportionate increase in the number of our 
native female agents during the past eight years ; but, 
owing to imperfect returns, it is impossible to give the 
exact number now employed. Our girls’ school now 
numbers 374, with some 53,740 scholars. While for 
many years past we have had ladies who, as qualified 
nurses, have taken an active share and help in the work 
of the numerous medical missions of our Society, it was 


122 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


only last year (1892) that we sent out our first fully 
qualified lady doctor to take charge of a women’s 
hospital in Hankow, North China. This autumn she 
will be followed by the first sent to India (Berhampore). 
We are happy to say, however, that four more ladies 
are now receiving training at the London School of 
Medicine for Women, and will, in the course of a year 
or two, we hope, enter upon active service abroad as 
lady doctors. 

We cannot lay claim to any originality in our 
forms and methods of work, but we can safely say that 
our agents have faithfully and efficiently carried on the 
various branches of work among women now so famil¬ 
iar to all who are interested in the subject: educational 
work of all kinds, both in schools and in zenanas, 
schools for the children of native Christians, orphan 
schools and village and other day-schools for the chil¬ 
dren of the heathen population, house-to-house visita¬ 
tion, itinerary evangelistic work in country villages, 
nursing work in th^ homes and in connection with the 
mission hospitals, gospel addresses to both the out¬ 
patients and the in-patients, the training and superin¬ 
tending of Bible-women and native agents, the transla¬ 
tion and preparation of text-books, magazines, and 
other useful and suitable literature for converts and the 
children who have been taught to read. These and 
many other forms of Christian work afford ample scope 
for the diversities of gifts and powers of our agents, 
who again and again prove their willing consecration 
to the Master and the work they love by adapting 
themselves to fresh surroundings and new forms of ser¬ 
vice; and every year and everywhere the work has 
been growing upon their hands and extending on every 


THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 123 

side, so that the cry from almost all parts of the field is 
“ We find it impossible to overtake it.” 

At home the work of the Committee has also been 
on similar lines to that of sister societies : endeavoring 
to rouse a wider and more intelligent interest in the 
work abroad by means of special literature (a quar¬ 
terly record of the work and other pamphlets), by hold¬ 
ing meetings to plead the cause and organizing auxilia¬ 
ries throughout the country, and more especially in the 
selection and training of those whose hearts have been 
stirred up by God to consecrate their lives to his ser¬ 
vice in the foreign field. 

Two years ago a change was made in the home 
organization by which the woman’s work of the Soci¬ 
ety was more closely identified with that of the general 
work. Lady directors are now admitted on the gen¬ 
eral board of direction, and, with the exception of the 
work of the selection and training of lady candidates, 
which is still in the hands of a ladies’ committee, all 
other details connected with the female mission work 
are carried on on the same lines and are under the 
same control as the general work of the Society. Prob¬ 
ably opinions will differ as to the wisdom or unwisdom 
of this joint management, but it is certainly well to rec¬ 
ognize the fact that “ in Christ Jesus there is neither 
male nor female,” and that our aim and object is one— 
to bring the glad tidings of a Saviour’s love within the 
reach of every weary, sin-laden soul, or, in the words 
of Scripture, “ to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal 
the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the cap¬ 
tives, the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at lib¬ 
erty them that are bruised.” 

It must be remembered that women constitute the 


124 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


larger half cf the population of the world ; also, that in 
laboring for their elevation we are laboring, not for the 
souls of the women themselves only, but for the whole 
of mankind of woman born: since she sits at the foun¬ 
tain-head of life and moulds the minds of the rising 
generation, implanting seeds of superstition or of faith, 
of evil or of virtue, the roots of which pierce so deeply 
into and intertwine so firmly with the groundwork of 
character that it is, humanly speaking, impossible to 
eradicate them in after life. Moreover, again and again 
our missionaries report that the chief hindrance to the 
harvest among the men is the influence exerted upon 
them in their homes by their wives and mothers, and 
that these also constitute the main force in upholding 
all systems of idolatry and superstition. 

Therefore, in the spirit of the old adage that “ union 
is strength,” we would join hands with our fathers and 
brothers and “ strive together for the faith of the gos¬ 
pel” 


WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 125 


WOMAN AND THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 

WOMAN'S WORK FOR THE AMERICAN 
NEGRO. 

BY MISS MARY G. BURDETTE. 

What shall we do with the American negro— 
the American citizen of African ancestry ? Does the 
question imply that his case requires special treatment, 
differing from that of American citizens of other de¬ 
scent ? If so, why so ? 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all 
men are created equal; that they are endowed with 
certain inalienable rights; that among them are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” So reads our 
glorious Declaration of Independence ; and the Consti¬ 
tution further affirms, “ All persons born or naturalized 
in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction 
thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State 
wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce 
any law which shall abridge the privileges of citizens of 
the United States.” 

Is the negro problem American ? 

“ Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto 
you, do ye even so unto them ” are the words of the 
Christ. 

Is the negro problem Christian ? 

A finely educated and notably eloquent son of the 
South is reported as saying that there was not a restau- 


126 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


rant between Washington and Florida where he could 
get a meal without going around to the kitchen door 
and taking it in his hands. What was his offence ? A 
black skin. “ Oh, yes,” you say, “ that is in the south. 
The problem is a southern one, and the South must 
settle it.” 

• Not so fast, friend. In how many hotels and res¬ 
taurants in the north would he fare better ? It is but 
a few weeks since we saw a well - known Christian 
household in a prominent northern city thrown into 
a state of pitiable and ludicrous perplexity by the ar¬ 
rival of a colored minister of acknowledged ability, un¬ 
blemished character, and wide and honored Christian 
influence. “ What shall we do with him ?” The house 
was large, there was plenty of unoccupied room, and 
had he been white there would have been no question 
concerning his entertainment. As it was, a whole 
afternoon was consumed in finding a suitable boarding 
place where he would come in contact with only per¬ 
sons of his own race! Was not the principle un¬ 
derlying this proceeding the same in essence as that 
which sometimes, among lawless classes in the south, 
bears its fruit in tar and feathers, cross-bones and 
skulls, mobs and lynchings ? The beam may be in our 
brother’s eye, but the mote in our own is not so minute 
as to escape detection. The problem is also north¬ 
ern. Without question it is national. Why should 
trades unions shut the colored man out of the ranks 
of skilled mechanics ? Why should public sentiment 
forbid his employment as a clerk, personal repulsion 
decline to enter into business partnership with him, 
and prejudice even deny him the privilege of driving 
the horse attached to a street car, in cases where he 


WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 12 7 

has unquestioned ability to fill these respective posi¬ 
tions, and where the only bar is that of race ? Why 
should social custom consign to kitchen, dining-room 
or laundry young women of confessed graces of person 
and mind and purity of life, who have struggled for 
and obtained an education, simply because the blood 
of Africa courses through their veins, even though it is 
sometimes mingled with the so-called “best blood” 
of America ? 

But you say, “ The educated, the refined and the 
pure are the exceptions. As a race the people are 
ignorant, superstitious, immoral, and often vicious.” 
Granted. But are not the exceptions marvelously 
numerous in view of the obstacles they are compelled to 
overcome; of the facts that their ancestors came from 
Africa and that but thirty years have elapsed since the 
Emancipation Proclamation broke their shackles, after 
two and a half centuries of bitter bondage, enforced 
ignorance and helpless degradation ? 

Again, why not encourage the fallen to rise by 
recognizing what is worthy of recognition in those who 
have struggled out from the low-down masses, and 
fitted themselves for places of trust and emolument ? 

What shall we do with the American negro? Just 
what we should do with any other American : give 
him the same opportunity, the same recognition. If 
he has ability and worth let him have the position his 
taste and merit demand. If he is ignorant, instruct 
him; if immoral, by example, no less than by precept, 
teach him purity, truth, honesty and honor; if he is 
superstitious, give him the light that shall put to flight 
the phantoms of a darkened mind: in a word, if he is 
down lift him up, and when he is up help him to 


128 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


stand. Educate him, Christianize him, teach him to 
be “ diligent in business, not slothful in spirit, serving 
the Lord,” and his elevation will be the glory of us 
all, as his degradation is the dishonor of us all. 

There is another side to the problem, in which 
the responsibility rests with the negro. Granted that 
opportunities are- given, he himself must prove them. 
If he does not, and will not, then he must not find 
fault if he remains an outcast from the society of the 
pure, the true, the noble, the cultured and the good. 

So much in general. Our specific theme is 

woman’s work in helping to solve the 

PROBLEM. 

We may first be permitted to refer to the work of 
women in the school-room. We concede that this 
work is not distinctively that of women, and, were it 
in the province of this paper, would bear testimony to 
the grand educational work accomplished by men, 
both white and colored. 

Nevertheless, I need not do more than call atten¬ 
tion to the peculiar influence of a true, pure, well-trained 
woman in the school-room. Day by day, as she 
teaches even secular branches, she impresses her own 
spirit and personality upon her pupils; they imbibe 
correct views of morality, are led to imitate her in 
right doing, to avoid what is wrong, and go out from 
their school life truer, gentler, stronger men and wo¬ 
men because of their contact with a soulful teacher, a 
pure good woman. 

But it is in the distinctively Christian schools, and 
especially in boarding schools, where there are facilities 
for making the school a model home and training pupils 


WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 129 


for domestic, industrial and religious as well as intel¬ 
lectual excellence, that woman as a teacher is doing 
her best and most far-reaching work. Thousands of 
girls have left such schools to be home-makers, while 
other thousands have become in turn teachers among 
their own people, and others have engaged in such 
various useful occupations as their specific talents and 
circumstances have permitted. The value of these 
schools can scarcely be overestimated nor the influence 
of these teachers overrated. But they are few and the 
people are many. The masses are still shut away from 
their help. 

The principal of a large boarding-school for 
young men and women came in person to the execu¬ 
tive board of a woman’s missionary society to plead 
for a training - teacher, and one argument was, “We 
take only the brightest and best; we turn numbers of 
others away every year.” Now the brightest and 
best furnish excellent material for such schools, but 
what of the numbers turned away? They represent 
the neglected masses, among whom there is said to be 
a million children and youth who ought to be in school 
but are not. How are these to be reached ? 

FIRST, IN THEIR HOMES. 

A lamentable drawback to the progress" of the 
colored race is found in their miserable homes. Not 
but that there are many exceptions, for which we thank 
God and take courage, but we speak of the rule. Wo¬ 
men are the home-makers; until the woman under¬ 
stands her responsibility and learns how to meet it 
the so-called home can be but a huddling place for the 
family. We have watched with much interest the work 

Woman in Missions. Q 


30 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


of certain women sent out as missionaries to the colored 
people, whose commissions read, “ Your work shall 
have special reference to the Christianization and 
elevation of the homes of the people .” Christianization 
means elevation. We call attention to some of the 
methods employed. The first of these is 

HOUSE-TO-HOUSE VISITATION. 

“ Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” 
And Jesus put forth his hand and touched him, saying, 
“ I will; be thou clean,” and immediately his leprosy 
was cleansed. Not thousands, but millions of these 
people are waiting for the outstretched hand of Chris¬ 
tianity, the touch of Jesus, the contact of intelligent, 
sympathetic helpfulness with their need; where can this 
touch be given, and where felt, as in the home ? How 
may they be touched? What do the missionaries 
teach as they go from house to house ? Everything 
the need demands and their opportunities and ability 
render possible. In answer to the question, “What 
are you doing?” one of these workers replied, “Caring 
for immortal souls in ebony houses yes, and they 
are also caring for the houses of these souls, for multi¬ 
tudes of these poor people sin grievously and suffer 
much because they know so little about their bodies. 
They are taught to glorify God in their bodies as well 
as in their spirits; they are also taught to care for their 
homes. This teaching was characteristically empha¬ 
sized by the woman who exclaimed, “ I will, honey. I 
will look up to God and clean up my house.” She 
had the right conception of the order—godliness, then 
cleanliness—but as inseparable as faith and works. 

The devices of the missionaries in Christianizing 


WORK FOR THE AMERICAN &EGRO. 131 

these homes are many. One writes: “ The influence 
of a growing- plant helped to get one home in a better 
condition, and the introduction of a pretty picture 
wrought a change in another. In a third, the mother 
asked me to look into the family sleeping-room, and 
lo, what a transformation! a clean floor, beds white 
and clean, the wall covered with clean newspapers, and, 
best of all, the woman clean and happy and a husband 
proud of the tidy home and the wife who had wrought 
the miracle.” Another testifies, “Where we visit most 
we have the best schools, the best meetings, the best 
women, and the best homes.” 

We refer next in connection with this work to a 
new feature, called by Joanna P. Moore, the saintly 
woman in whose heart and brain it originated, 

THE FIRESIDE SCHOOL. 

Concerning the plan she thus writes to parents: 
“ The order of the day is a school around every fire¬ 
side : a bright lamp burning on the table covered with 
lovely books and papers and eager little faces around 
it, with mother and father as teachers, although they 
are also pupils, and are learning as they teach. Who 
can look upon such a home-picture and not have his 
heart swell with thanksgiving to God ? 

“ We hear much about the education of our chil¬ 
dren. We are told to send them to school, to build 
school-houses and employ teachers, etc. This is all 
right as far as it goes, but it will not go far towards 
making truly intelligent and good men or women with¬ 
out this fireside school. 

“ Home is the great school. Mother, make your 
own home a school. Get interesting books for your 


i 3 2 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


children; read with them and talk about what you read. 
Do this when they are very young; awaken in them 
a love for books and train them in habits of study. 
Father, when your day’s work is done, do not go to 
the saloon, nor to your neighbor’s home to gossip, but 
put a bright light on the table, get out a good paper 
or some book with pictures, read with your children 
if you can; if not, let them read to you. Ask them to 
tell you about the lessons they have learned at school. 
Talk to them pleasantly. Parents and children are the 
best company for each other, and my plan will keep 
the little ones off the street and in the home. Be pa¬ 
tient and kind. Don’t scold and whip. Keep your 
children close to your heart. Tie them to their home 
by cords of affection. Make your home such a school 
and you will help to make an intelligent nation.” 

The Fireside School contemplates a regular course 
of reading in the home, including a portion of the Bible. 
Besides promising to read each day with her children, 
the following 

mother’s pledge 

is taken: 

1. “I promise that by the help of God I will 
pray with and for my children and expect their early 
conversion. 

2. “ I will try to be a good pattern for my chil¬ 
dren in my daily life, especially in temper, conversa¬ 
tion and dress. 

3. “ I will recognize the fact that God expects me 
to care for and train my children for him in soul and 
mind as well as in body.” 


WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 133 

It is only about a year since this plan was inaugu¬ 
rated, but Miss Moore reports that, besides 300 Bibles, 
800 other good books have been placed in homes 
where mothers have taken the pledge, and some fifty 
of these mothers have received certificates testifying to 
the faithful discharge of the requirements during the 
first year. 

As soon as these people learn to read Satan is on 
hand with pernicious literature. This work in homes 
gives a blessed opportunity to supplant these designs 
with food instead of poison. 

Time does not allow many details concerning the 
multiplied phases of this work in homes, which we 
believe is doing more, as far as it is prosecuted, than 
any other one thing to stimulate these people physi¬ 
cally, intellectually, morally and religiously. Being 
fundamental work it contributes to the success of 
every other line of effort. It includes instruction in 
proper ventilation, selection and preparation of whole¬ 
some food, economical uses of money, care of sick, 
improvement of mind, refinement of manners, and the 
cultivation of spiritual graces, all on a practical and 
Christian foundation. Abundant opportunity is af¬ 
forded for the inculcation of temperance principles, for 
the promotion of social purity, for leading the people 
to help themselves, and creating such sentiment in favor 
of education and religion as is annually sending thou¬ 
sands of children and youth into schools, and even lead¬ 
ing to the organization and support of schools and 
churches and the building of school and meeting¬ 
houses. Suffer a single illustration: 

A Christian woman visited in the Indian Territory 
a settlement of negroes appropriately named Sodom. 


134 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


Ignorance, poverty and immorality held high carnival. 
Quietly she began her work, and for weeks she con¬ 
tinued to visit the loathsome cabins, intent on establish¬ 
ing friendly relations between herself and the inmates. 
By and by she had so won her way that she began to 
ask, in one hut after another, “ Do your children go to 
school ?” “ No, honey.” “ Why not ?” “ Is n’t no 

school.” “Why not?” “We’s too poor, honey.” 
“Do you use snuff?” “Yes, honey.” “Do you use 
tobacco?” “Yes, honey.” “Do you drink beer?” 
“Yes, honey.” “What does your snuff cost? Your 
tobacco ? your beer ? Do you not see that you pay a 
great deal more for these harmful things than it would 
cost you to pay your share of a teacher’s salary and 
educate your children ? Which do you love best: snuff, 
tobacco and beer, or your little ones ? Can you give 
up these harmful things for the sake of your children ?” 
Well, they did—at least, some of them did—and the 
town set apart an old cabin for a school-house, and 
secured a colored teacher from a Christian board¬ 
ing-school not far away. In less than a year the men 
hauled lumber and erected a new board school-house 
which served also as a meeting-house; the women 
began to clean up their cabins, and in some little 
glass windows were put, and finally the people became 
ashamed of the name of their town and changed it, so 
that now, if you should visit the place where old Sodom 
grovelled, you would find the progressive little settle¬ 
ment, Pleasant Grove, with its school, its church and its 
greatly improved homes and people. Note how many 
points there are in this single incident illustrating the 
value of house-to-house work. Perhaps here, rather 
than farther on, we may mention the importance of 


WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 135 

special work for and with children in addition to that 
accomplished in the home, and, not having time for all 
that has been attempted, we make special mention of 

INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 

In so doing we now refer not so much to the well- 
equipped schools, carried on in a few places on a large 
scale, as to such schools as may be organized, without 
expense for rent or building, in any place where there is 
a properly qualified woman to take charge; schools 
in which the children may be gathered for two hours 
each week in the church, school-house, or some home, 
and taught the nobility of labor, and the importance of 
doing conscientiously and thoroughly whatever task is 
assigned. It is not so much what they do as how 
and in what spirit they do it. Such work is given 
them as is practicable and economical. The girls are 
taught all kinds of sewing, from the overhanding of 
patchwork through the successive grades of plain and 
ornamental needlework, while the hands of the boys 
are kept busy with any employment adapted to their 
tastes and possible under the circumstances. For tiny 
ones the kindergarten occupations furnish many sug¬ 
gestions. The kitchen garden idea is also valuable. 
The text enforced over and over again is “ He that is 
faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.” 

Is industry the only thing taught in these schools ? 
Far from it. These weekly gatherings of children give 
abundant opportunity for lessons in cleanliness of body, 
neatness in dress, courtesy in conduct, purity in morals 
and duty towards God and humanity. The children 
carry many lessons into their homes. A prominent white 
citizen in a southern city said to the leader of one of 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


136 

these schools, “ I can always tell the children who go to 
your Industrial school; they have cleaner and brighter 
faces, their clothing is neater, their tones gentler, their 
conversation purer, and their conduct better than that 
of children who have not been under such influence.” 

Already a number who, ten, twelve and fifteen 
years ago were in these Industrial schools, have grown 
to manhood and womanhood. Many have homes of 
their own and many are ranking as excellent servants 
and artizans. Out of these schools have also come 
teachers, ministers and missionaries. One worker says, 
“ The best and most reliable teachers in my Industrial 
schools are those who entered as pupils. ” 

One organization of Christian women has inaugu¬ 
rated and made a very successful beginning in a system 
of Industrial and model Homes which are established 
generally in connection with the church schools, and 
furnish instruction in all departments of housekeeping, 
dressmaking, plain sewing, cooking, gardening, etc. 
In these schools it is the rule that girls shall spend their 
senior year in the Home. The spiritual side of the work 
is reported as very encouraging. 

Is it Judge Tourgee who makes the spelling-book 
the prime factor in the elevation of the negro ? We 
amend his motion by adding the Bible, and placing it 
first. The old-time negro had no use for the Bible. 
One woman said to a visitor, “ No, I can’t read and do n’t 
want to. I do n’t need to read the Bible. I’s got the 
sperit, and it teaches me not to put my light under a 
bushel, nor under a peck neither. People as has head- 
religion gets along well enough for a time, but when 
they dies they gets left.” 

Nevertheless, “ The entrance of God’s word giveth 


WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 137 

light; it giveth understanding to the simple,” and we 
are glad to quote from a letter written recently by one 
of these enlightened colored women, who lives in a 
town where a Christian white missionary has for years 
met a class of colored women every morning for Bible 
study, instruction in personal duties, and prayers. She 
says, “My people used to say‘De Bible no’count. 
We done got de sperit; de letter killeth but de sperit 
giveth light.’ Now many of these same women love 
the Bible, and would rather die than give up read¬ 
ing it.” 

Recognizing the importance of this study, scores of 

BIBLE BANDS, 

whose members meet for special study, supplement the 
work done in the homes, and are open to both sexes. 
Many ministers attend, and testify to receiving much 
help in interpreting and teaching the Word. “ It is as¬ 
tonishing,” writes one missionary, “ how preachers 
pick up and assimilate truths taught, and often preach 
them in our presence almost verbatim, with great im¬ 
pressiveness and serene unconsciousness.” 

A prominent educated colored pastor and editor 
in Memphis, referring to the effect of this work on that 
city, says, “ The quietude that now prevails, compared 
with former times, is remarkable. Many minds that 
had gone wild over Baal-worship have been settled, and 
the people are thinking better and living better.” An¬ 
other pastor testifies, “ There has been quite a revolu¬ 
tion in my church since these sisters have been at work. 
My people now bring their Bibles to church and know 
how to find the text.” It is from these Bible Bands 
that the majority of workers in Industrial, Mission, 


138 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


Sunday and Temperance schools are recruited, and 
from them also come most of the selected ones who 
form the local training-classes, of which we shall speak 
later. At a recent quarterly meeting of Bible Bands in 
one city two hundred colored women were in attend¬ 
ance. These women are active in their own churches 
and contribute also to home and foreign missions. 

Remember, “ like mother, like childand the 
children of to-day are the men and women of to-mor¬ 
row. A people built upon a Bible foundation cannot 
but be a good people. 

Another effective means of helping the women, 
and through them the race, is the 

women’s or mothers’ meeting. 

Here experiences are related, plans discussed, perplex¬ 
ities stated and encouragements reported under intelli¬ 
gent Christian leadership. Bible study and prayer are 
notable features. Sometimes a mother walks several 
miles with a baby in her arms to be present. One of 
these women prayed, “ Lord, when we measure our¬ 
selves by thy Word we come short in every part. 
What shall we do ?” Was there not an answer in 
the testimony of another woman, who said, “ Before I 
learned to live by my Bible my religion was like a fire 
of shavings, all ablaze one day and all out the next ; 
but now I’ve settled down to a steady fire of solid, 
live-oak coals ” ? 


TRAINING- CLASSES 

for Christian workers next claim our attention. These 
classes are composed of women who can give more or 
less time to personal work outside of their own homes 


WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 1 39 

in the neighborhoods in which they live. They are 
carefully instructed in Bible truths and how to apply 
them, and are then sent out to communicate what they 
have received. One consecrated leader in such work 
says, “ Through my women’s meetings during the past 
eight weeks I have reached not less than one thousand 
persons with a Bible lesson occupying weekly one 
hour.” In her training-class she imparted truth each 
week to twenty earnest women who, with their Bibles, 
visit as they have time the homes of their less favored 
and more ignorant sisters. 

In one city where there are twenty-two Industrial 
Schools nineteen are conducted by women belonging 
to one of these training-classes which enrolls thirty-five 
members. These women, besides visiting in homes 
and teaching in Industrial Schools, organize and teach 
neighborhood Sunday-schools, held often in their own 
little homes, for neglected children whom they gather 
from the streets, visit hospitals, asylums, poorhouses 
and jails, carrying papers and tracts and a gospel mes- 
age of salvation. Many of these women work hard to 
earn a living for their families, and yet so great is their 
desire for the uplifting of the race that they find time 
for this ministry of help and hope. 

One sister, whose years number sixty-five and who 
had learned to read the Bible after she had passed 
sixty, said, “ I depend upon the Bible for my soul as I 
do upon food for my body, and I want to help a little. 
I saw some children running wild, and I said, ‘ They 
are little things; I will help them.’ I visited the cab¬ 
ins on the plantation and invited the people to send 
their children to my home on Sunday. At first five 
came, but now forty-five; and I have them come also 


140 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 

on Saturday, because I cannot teach them enough on 
Sunday. Sisters, look around for the little things, and 
keep doing them.” 

The idea of special training for native workers 
originated with Joanna P. Moore, whose name has been 
previously mentioned, and who for thirty years has 
devoted herself heroically to the cause of the higher 
emancipation of the colored race from the thralldom of 
ignorance and error. The mustard-seed is already 
growing into tree-like proportions, and besides her own 
Training-school for Women at Little Rock and a 
growing number of local classes in other places, the 
women of the Baptist denomination are sustaining a 
missionary training department in connection with 
Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C., and another in .con¬ 
nection with Spelman Seminary, Atlanta, Ga. 

The local classes are designed for women who 
cannot leave their homes, but who are capable of ren¬ 
dering service in their own churches and communi¬ 
ties. The departments at Shaw and Spelman are de¬ 
signed for the training of specially qualified, educated 
colored women for missionary work among their own 
people in this land or in Africa. 

IN CONCLUSION. 

We have called attention to a few facts showing 
some phases of work by means of which woman is try¬ 
ing to assist in the physical, intellectual and spiritual 
uplifting of the American negro, and as a consequence 
in the Christian and republican solution of the race 
problem as far as it concerns him. We quote some tes¬ 
timony of workers showing encouragement. Says one: 

“ I see a steady progress all along the line. In 


WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 141 

the country there is a wonderful uprising of women 
awaking as out of sleep. A large number of them are 
now engaged in more or less work in and near their 
own homes; but all feel the need of training.” An¬ 
other : “ Among the older people we notice a much 
deeper interest in children and youth, more desire that 
good instruction be provided for them, and a willingness 
to arrange the church services so as to give them a 
time and place for their meetings and Bible readings. 
It used to be common to hear the old folks grumble 
about ‘ children getting in their way at church/ but now 
they bring them. Quite a number who were children 
when we came are now willing and able to be our 
helpers.” 

One very successful worker in Tennessee, herself 
an educated and refined negro, among other encour¬ 
agements speaks of the growing recognition given to 
the colored women by their white sisters, and refers to 
their attendance at some of the meetings, their evident 
interest, words of sympathy and acts of kindness, and 
says, “ I believe the key-note has been struck that will 
eventually harmonize the terrible disturbance that 
Satan and sin have made in our land. That key-note 
is found in the effort now put forth to Christianize the 
homes of our people, and lay upon those who are helped 
the responsibility to help others. As I go among my 
people I teach, with application to the race question, 
the 12th chapter of Romans, emphasizing the 14th 
verse: ‘ Bless them which persecute you, bless, and 
curse not.’ ” 

Had we time we would speak of some notable 
meetings well attended and well conducted, conventions 
composed of and presided over by colored women, 


142 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


who have been reached and trained in the way des¬ 
cribed. We must crave a moment’s indulgence to 
refer to a Mothers’ Conference recently held in the 
city of Little Rock, Ark., in which were discussed 
ably and effectively a number of topics relating to the 
homes, especially the duties and responsibilities of 
wives and mothers. The invitation was sent to wo¬ 
men representing all denominations, stating that a 
great battle was to be fought, not between Methodists 
and Baptists, but between good homes and bad homes, 
between the influences that degrade and destroy homes 
and those that purify and elevate them. Among the 
questions discussed we enumerate the following: 

1. The necessity of the mother being a pattern to 
her children in temper, conversation and dress. 

2. The importance of mothers improving them¬ 
selves physically, mentally and morally for the sake 
of their children. 

3. At what age should obedience be enforced ? 

4. Can children be taught manners and morals 
in their plays ? If so, should not parents give careful 
attention to the plays in which their children engage? 

5. Discussion of right and wrong methods of pun¬ 
ishment. 

6. Temperance being self-control in the matter of 
appetites and passions, how are children taught intem¬ 
perance when very young ? 

7. What is the proper dress, and food, and amount 
of sleep for children at given ages ? 

8. How can a Fireside School be maintained in 
every home, and how can the necessary books be ob¬ 
tained ? 

9. How do some of our present plans for raising 


WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 143 

money for the Lord’s cause teach our children bold¬ 
ness, vanity, pride, selfishness and self-gratification ? 

10. Discussion of methods by which money could 
be raised so as to teach the children self-denial, modes¬ 
ty, reverence for God and a love for the cause of Christ. 

Last, but not least, in many parts of the south, 
where such work as we have described has been wisely 
carried on, we note a slow but hopeful breaking down 
of foolish and wicked race prejudice, and in some places 
white women in good standing in society and the 
church are not only laying their hands to the work, 
but in so doing are asking for the assistance of for¬ 
merly ostracized missionaries. The breach is not wide, 
but a crack is appearing in the wall. Words of com¬ 
mendation are growing more frequent as the work 
is becoming better understood. Said one lady to a 
missionary, “ The more I see of your work the better I 
like it.” Another, “ Can you not attend our W. C. T. 
U. regularly? You came once last year, and ever 
since I have been investigating your noble work. The 
more I see of it the more I am convinced it is just 
what our colored people need;” and still another, 
“ You do not know me, but I know of your work, and 
wish that my own little girl could be under such in¬ 
struction.” 

We have not theorized, but have stated facts. 
What do you think of such work ? Is it not womanly ? 
Is it not Christian ? Is it not appropriate ? Is it not 
practical ? Is it not effective ? Why, then, not do 
more of it ? As we sweep our eye over the nearly 
eight millions of colored people in our land, the great 
majority of whom are waiting for just such help, and 
then look upon the few scattered helpers, we recall the 


144 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 

announcement of the negro minister in Texas: “We 
are celebrating the centennial of moderate missions .” 
A woman was observed laying a paper pattern, now 
this way and now that way, on a piece of cloth, while 
her face showed a distressed perplexity which she 
thus explained : “ I want to cut two garments but have 
only cloth enough for one.” Dear women of the 
Christian church, a great work lies before you; will 
you see to it that the material for its accomplishment is 
commensurate to the need? Every boy saved be¬ 
comes a saved man ; every girl saved becomes a saved 
woman; every woman taught becomes directly or in¬ 
directly a teacher ; every home transformed becomes a 
centre of light and beneficent influence. Lift up the 
women and you lift up the race. Save the home and 
you save the nation. Christianize and rightly educate 
the people, white and black, and you settle the race 
problem once for all as Jesus Christ would have it set¬ 
tled. Can we better close this paper than with the 
prayer of the Afro-American brother, “ Lord, link and 
tie us together by one bond of Christian qualification ” ? 
Then indeed shall we be the nation whom righteous¬ 
ness exalteth, the happy people whose God is the 
Lord. 


IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. 145 


WOMAN AND MEDICAL MISSIONS. 

IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. 

BY ISABELLA BIRD BISHOP. 

It is as a traveller that I am asked to address this 
audience, and as one who has been converted from in- 
differentism to the duty and importance of missionary 
effort by seeing in the Foreign Mission field the work 
and influence of the consecrated lives of Christian men 
and women, many of them citizens of your great repub¬ 
lic. In four years and a half of Asiatic travelling, 
during most of which time I have lived among the 
people with an interpreter, I have learned of the sore 
needs of the unchristianized world, with its sorrows and 
its sins. 

Here and in Britain those who stay at home and 
help missions naturally dwell more on the work done; 
to me it is the work undone which bulks appallingly: 
the ten hundred and thirty millions without Christ 
nearly nineteen centuries after his birth, and the awful 
fact that, in spite of the increased activity of the church, 
heathenism has so gained upon our efforts that, while 
something under four millions of persons have re¬ 
ceived baptism on making a Christian profession within 
this century, the natural increase of the world’s non- 
Christian population has been two hundred millions in 
the same time. It may be said that “ the times of this 
ignorance God winked at,” when our knowledge was 
10 


Woman in Missions. 


146 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


but of the fringe of heathendom; but in our age, when 
travellers have scarcely left any region untouched, and 
Geographical, Ethnographical and Anthropological so¬ 
cieties bring the knowledge of “ Dark Continents ” and 
the condition of their peoples to our very doors, apathy 
or half-heartedness is without excuse, and our respon¬ 
sibility is vastly increased by our enlightenment. 

On no point is our modern information more 
explicit than on the amount of suffering which is every¬ 
where the result of native methods of medical treat¬ 
ment, and in a little more than half a century the 
church, waking up at last to see that in order to do her 
Lord’s work she must adopt her Lord’s methods, has 
increased the number of her medical missionaries from 
ten to 359, seventy-four of whom are women, all pledged 
to obedience to the Master’s double command, “ Heal 
the sick and preach the gospel.” But what are they 
among so many ? 

We are all painfully aware of what sickness means 
among ourselves: the physical suffering, the torturing 
anxieties, the upsetting of plans, the incapacity for bread¬ 
winning, the day and night watching, the ups and downs 
of hope, and ofttimes its slow and anguished abandon¬ 
ment, and much besides. But we also know what it is 
to have at command the skill, kindness and devoted 
attention of the most generous of professions, with every 
expedient for alleviating suffering which modern sci¬ 
ence has devised. We know how every thing which can 
tempt the appetite or give even temporary ease is pro¬ 
cured at any cost. We know the patient self-sacrifice 
of friends and relations, the tender touch, the sympa¬ 
thetic tones, the ransacking for our benefit of all the 
sources of comfort and interest, and the skill and expe- 


IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. 147 

dients of that modern blessing, the trained nurse. 
Among us the sick person becomes temporarily royal 
and the sick-room sacred ground. Every voice and 
footfall is hushed, knockers and bells are muffled, ordi¬ 
nary occupations are modified or suspended; the patient 
is the pivot on which for the time the household re¬ 
volves, and all that is choice or beautiful finds its way 
to the sick-room. With all the sorrow and suffering 
of illness among us it is often a time of singular revela¬ 
tions of depths of tenderness previously undreamed of— 
of beauties of self-denial in commonplace characters 
hitherto unsuspected, and of abounding kind-hearted¬ 
ness among many who were formerly strangers. And 
to the credit of the Christianity which has enlightened 
us it must be added that our noble medical charities are 
open, like the Great Physician’s compassion, “without 
money and without price” to the lonely and outcast 
poor, and that those who from various circumstances 
cannot be cared for in their own homes receive in our 
magnificently equipped hospitals every attention which 
it is in the power of our best physicians and nurses to 
bestow. 

Above all, the pious ministrations of ministers 
and Christian friends soothe and strengthen the spirit ; 
a peace which passeth understanding possesses the be¬ 
liever’s soul, and when human help is vain the rod and 
staff of the Good Shepherd are at hand amid the swell¬ 
ings of Jordan, and the Saviour’s voice, speaking of life 
and resurrection, is heard above the footfall of the king 
of terrors as the soul passes unharmed unto Him who 
hath abolished death and brought life and immortality 
to light through his gospel. 

But what does illness usually mean in non-Chris- 


148 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


tian lands ? We must remember that throughout the 
greater part of the heathen world illness is believed to 
be the work of demons, or, more correctly, a form of 
demoniacal possession, and a sick person is an object 
of loathing as well as of fear. The house is regarded 
as polluted by his presence. In many lands he is 
removed to an out-building, where he is supplied once 
a day with food and water, and he is shunned by his 
nearest relations. If his healing is desired the doctors 
and priests are summoned, gongs and drums are beat¬ 
en, fires are lighted as the centres of diabolical dances 
accompanied by frenzied chants, incantations and exor¬ 
cisms are resorted to, the stomach of the patient is 
beaten with clubs to drive out the supposed demon, he 
is subjected to untellable tortures, and often, when the 
malady becomes chronic or is severely infectious, he is 
carried to a mountain top or river bank, supplied with 
a little food and water, and left to die alone. 

In the case of women, and especially of the seclu¬ 
ded women, the barbarities inflicted by those who pro¬ 
fess to attend them in sickness cannot be related in such 
an audience. It is enough to say that native midwifery 
abounds in ignorant and brutal customs which in thou¬ 
sands of cases produce life-long suffering and, in many, 
fatal results. It is not unusual in polygamous house¬ 
holds for discarded or uncared-for wives to bribe the 
midwife to inflict such an injury upon the favorite wife 
as shall render her incapable for further child-bearing. 

In Farther India, and even in India, it is usual for 
midwives to jump upon the abdomen of the mother in 
her agony, or to put a plank across it and jump on the 
ends of the plank, in order to accelerate the processes 
of nature; and in one of your own mission hospitals in 


IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. 149 

Northern India which I visited I saw, among nine pa¬ 
tients, five who were suffering from severe abscesses and 
internal injuries produced by the fracture of one or 
more of the false ribs under this barbarous treatment. 
And thus, in aggravated agony, the curse of Eden is 
fulfilled upon the child-mothers of the East. It is cus¬ 
tomary in many parts to place a mother after child¬ 
birth, without clothing, in front of a hot fire until the 
skin of the abdomen is covered with severe blisters, 
after which she is plunged into cold water. 

In Africa, as is well known, the “witch doctor” 
not only inflicts horrible barbarities upon the sick and 
infinite wrongs upon the innocent, but it is less well 
known that in comparatively civilized Asia the native 
systems of medicine are usually mixed up with witch¬ 
craft, astrology and demonology, and are compounds 
of empiricism, superstition and ignorance, and nowhere 
more so than in China. I by no means intend to say 
that there are no efficacious remedies in the hands of 
the native doctors, or that their methods are always in¬ 
tentionally barbarous. Much of the barbarity is the 
result of gross ignorance and superstition. I will 
give a few of some of the milder and simpler forms 
of treatment which have come under my own observa¬ 
tion : 

In rheumatism, sewing a patient up in the skin of 
a newly-killed sheep, and walking him about in the 
hot sun till it stiffens upon him. 

For deafness, drinking warm blood taken from a 
vein at the back of a man’s ear; or placing the patient 
on the ground at the feet of an operator raised consid¬ 
erably above him, who lifts him up nine times by his 
ears, which are frequently torn off during the process; 


150 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


or piercing the drum of the ear, which usually produces 
complete deafness. 

Wounds are constantly stuffed with cayenne pep¬ 
per, and the skin is drawn over it by stitches of twine. 

Severe rheumatism in the ankles is often treated by 
cutting open the back of the heel, scraping away the 
flesh to the bone, filling the cavity with cayenne pep¬ 
per, and stitching the skin over it; gangrene and death 
frequently resulting. 

The supposition being that illness is the work of 
demons, the doctors, for a large fee, will provide a lock 
of the hair of the demon that has wrought the ill. They 
slash the patient’s skin, remove a piece of flesh, insert 
the hair into the cavity, and stitch the skin over it. 
Inflammation and suppuration occur, the flesh breaks 
away from the stitches, and the process is repeated, till 
in many cases the patient’s strength and purse become 
exhausted and he dies. 

External tumors are strangled by tying round their 
base human hairs of unusual length and strength, mor¬ 
tification and death frequently resulting. 

Fractures are placed in splints of rough, unpadded 
bark, and are tied up with coarse string so tightly that 
blisters, severe wounds, and mortification frequently 
occur. 

In delirium from fever, which is regarded as one of 
the worst forms of demoniacal possession, the sufferer 
is, in some regions, placed in an out-house and chained 
hand and foot to a stone block. Would that this aud¬ 
ience could realize something of the miseries endured 
by the heathen from malarial fever alone, where the 
patients are untended in their misery, which is fabu¬ 
lously augmented by the ignorance and cruel remedies 


IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. 1 5 1 

(so-called) of native medicine ! From malarial fever 
alone 437,000 natives died in 1888 in the Punjab, a 
mass of suffering terrible to think of. 

In China it is customary to “ let out ” as they say, 
pain in the head by piercing the eye-ball or drum of 
the ear, treatment which often produces deafness or 
blindness. For some maladies the eating and drinking 
by parents of the excreta of their own offspring is pre¬ 
scribed—in others those of a sacred animal; and I can¬ 
not horrify you by details of the nature of the poultices 
and lotions which are applied in eye diseases. In one 
of the most elaborately civilized of Eastern countries, 
in many cases, when a father is seriously ill, the doctor, 
using incantations, cuts a piece of flesh from the son’s 
arm, cooks it with magical ceremonies, and the patient 
eats it as an efficacious cure for his malady. 

In the same country the following is not an unusual 
prescription for certain painful but slight ailments: 10 
Spanish flies; 3 centipeds; 10 silk worms; 10 scor¬ 
pions. To be pounded together and taken at once. 
This appalling dose brings on severe inflammation, 
which in the cases which have come under the notice of 
the medical missionary have always ended fatally. The 
Hakims of the same nation profess to cure rheumatism, 
which seems to be a world-wide affliction, by sticking 
the body of the patient over with large needles having 
tow dipped in oil round their heads. This is set fire 
to and forms a sort of cautery, producing wounds 
which are aggravated by the insertion of what are 
called “medicinal nails,” composed of corrosive subli¬ 
mate, arsenic and salt cooked up with mucilage. The 
resulting wounds are often very severe, and the profuse 
discharge saps the strength and sometimes destroys the 


152 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 

lives of patients. Such are among the remedies pre¬ 
vailing not among savages, but among races whose civ¬ 
ilization is much older and more elaborate than our own. 

In all countries a belief in the efficacy of certain 
idols, shrines, stones, trees or waters prevails, and no 
Buddhist, Hindoo or Moslem would spend an hour of 
the day or night without a charm, amulet, or talisman, 
purchased from the priests, round his neck or arm, 
with the object of warding off sickness. The shrines of 
the medicine gods of all nations are sure of votaries and 
offerings, and even in modern Japan the red lacquer 
medicine-god Binzuru is universally resorted to by and 
for the sick, the method of invocation consisting in rub¬ 
bing with the finger that part of the idol’s person which 
corresponds to the affected part of the patient. 

Of the sanitary and antiseptic precautions required 
in sickness these people have no knowledge, and their 
wounds, whether natural or artificial, are in the hot 
weather alive with maggots. The alleviations which in 
Christian countries mitigate the sufferings of the dying 
are unknown to them, and they regard death as the 
triumph of the supposed demon. Amidst beating of 
gongs, drummings, shoutings and incantations, with 
their dying thirst unassuaged, and with their nostrils 
plugged with a mixture of aromatic herbs and clay, or 
with the mud of sacred streams, our heathen brethren 
and sisters are passing in an unending, ghastly, re¬ 
proachful procession into Christless graves at the rate 
of forty-three millions a year. Ghastliest and most 
solemn thought, that for every minute in wffiich we have 
been assembled here eighty-three Christless souls from 
death-beds such as these have passed into the presence 
of their Judge—and ours ! 


IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. I 53 

Their physical woes justly move us, but their 
Christlessness and hopelessness have an infinity of 
piteousness. Over their sick-beds no divine Comforter 
broods; no revelation of the fatherhood of God or 
the brotherhood of Christ has reached them, or one 
glimmer of that light which He who is the resurrection 
and the life has shed on the future of the human spirit. 
Where are our agonizing prayers, where is our heart¬ 
brokenness, where our great personal self-denials for 
the heathen? “ Oh that my head were waters, and my 
eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and 
night for the slain,” groans the prophet Jeremiah. 
When St. Paul wrote of those “ whose end is destruc¬ 
tion ” it was on a page blotted with his tears; and when 
He who alone knows what destruction is, beheld the 
city which was to reject him, his tears flowed over its 
self-chosen doom. 

Nearly all doors are now open to the medical mis¬ 
sionary. Who of you will enter in, my Christian sis¬ 
ters ? The person of the Hakim is everywhere sacred. 
It is the glorious work of the missionary physician to 
overthrow those barbarous systems of medical treat¬ 
ment to which I have briefly alluded, and to substitute 
for them the scientific methods, the skill and the suavi¬ 
ties of European medicine, as well as to inculcate ten¬ 
derness for suffering and reverence for human life. To 
our medical sisters is the special honor given to enter 
the domestic Bastiles of the East with healing and light, 
and to make an end by their skilled and beneficent 
methods of the barbarous practices of native midwifery, 
and of the many remediable sufferings of their own sex. 

But it is as the missionary physician, “ the Hakim 
in Christ’s likeness,” “ the Hakim with the Bible,” that 


154 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


the medical missionary follows in his Master’s footsteps. 
He must subvert worse systems even than those of the 
native treatment of diseases. In the dispensary, the 
home, and especially in the hospital, he has opportuni¬ 
ties which fall to the lot of no other of awaking a sense 
of the disease of sin—of sin which cannot be atoned for 
by penances, pilgrimages, or gifts, or washed away by 
ceremonial ablutions, and gently opening the blind 
eyes to the love and atonement of Him whose servant 
he is. In Moslem and Buddhist lands the evangelistic 
missionary is unsought, unwelcomed, shunned. He 
must create his work by slow and persevering toil, and 
at the best he rarely reaches the undercurrents of the 
thought and life of the people among whom he dwells. 
In the case of the medical missionary the work seeks 
him, claims him, pursues him, absorbs him. Crowds 
compelled by the grip of pain throng round him, and 
as soon as his stammering tongue can speak of Jesus 
his audience is ready to listen. Without effort he learns 
the inner lives, the religious ideas, the superstitions, the 
social difficulties, the criticisms on Christianity, the 
pressure of circumstances, the ignorance and the crav¬ 
ings of all classes, and some, at least, of those who have 
learned to love and trust the servant are won to love 
and trust the Master. 

In a survey of many mission fields,, and of vast, 
unevangelized regions, specially in Asia, where Chris¬ 
tianity comes into contact with Islam and the higher 
philosophical, non-Christian systems, I have come to 
think that the multiplication of male and female medical 
missionaries is the most important work in connection 
with missions which lies before the church, as well as 
the most blessed form of missionary effort to which 


IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. 155 

young men and women who are consecrated to foreign 
service can aspire. 

Bodily suffering and spiritual blindness are calling 
with an exceedingly bitter cry for the healing life-work 
of consecrated men and women, but the need can be 
met by the consecrated alone. For the half-hearted, 
the indolent, the selfish, the doubting, and the unloving 
there is no call and no room. There must be “ double 
qualifications intense love to Christ, and intense love 
for those for whom he died. In conclusion, I desire to 
emphasize my unqualified testimony to the value and 
power of medical missions. To my thinking none 
follow more closely in the Master’s footprints than the 
medical missionary, and in no work are the higher 
teachings of Christianity more legible and easily recog¬ 
nized. The true missionary-doctor witnesses by his 
life-work to Christ the Healer, and is an epistle of 
Christ, translating Christ’s love and teaching into object- 
lessons which all can understand. Once again the 
lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see, to the poor the 
gospel is preached, and if the lepers are not cleansed 
the miseries of their condition are greatly mitigated. 
In looking back upon medical missions in different 
parts of the world I cannot recall one, where the phys¬ 
ician was truly “ a Hakim in Christ’s likeness,” which 
was not healing, helping, blessing; making an end of 
much of the cruelty which proceeds from ignorance, 
softening prejudices against Christianity, opening 
closed doors for the Gospel, and while pointing to the 
cross which is elevated for “ the healing of the nations ” 
telling in every work of love and of consecrated skill of 
the infinit compassion of him who came “ not to de¬ 
stroy men’s lives, but to save them.” 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


156 


WOMAN'S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 

BY MRS. J. T. GRACEY. 

On the 3d of November, 1869, the first medical 
missionary woman sailed from New York for the 
continent of Asia. She was a native of the State of 
New York and a graduate of the Woman’s Medical 
College of Philadelphia. She reached her field of 
labor in North India, January, 1870. She enjoyed 
the honorable distinction not only of being the pio¬ 
neer woman physician in India, but the first woman 
physician ever sent out by any missionary society into 
any part of the non-Christian world. 

Dr. Swain was the forerunner of a company of 
women destined in a new manner to prepare the way 
of the Lord, in opening the homes and hearts of 
heathendom. She stepped out to inaugurate one of 
the most important humane efforts of this century, aye, 
of any century. In this, as in all great reforms, the 
Christian Church led the way. The story of woman’s 
misery and suffering had been wafted across the sea, 
and the heart of Christian womanhood in America 
had been deeply touched as we were informed that 
within the walls of palace and hut were women, 
titled and untitled, some glistening with gems, others 
without any of life’s comforts, child-wife and child- 
widow, pampered queen and hungry daughter, proud 
mother and childless wife, who in hours of sickness 
and suffering, and in time of maternity, were without 


woman’s medical work in missions. 157 

proper medical care; or, if any attention was given, it 
was by ignorant practitioners who judged their symp¬ 
toms from hearsay, and who knew little or nothing of 
the anatomy or physiology of the human body. The 
inexorable laws of caste and custom doomed their 
miserable victims to death rather than admit a phy¬ 
sician within the precincts of their guarded seclusion, 
and thus hundreds, and even thousands, were left to 
suffer, linger and die as the beast dieth. It became 
apparent that only women could meet this great em¬ 
ergency, and it was providential that the battle for the 
medical education of women had been fought out, quite 
apart from the special claims of missions, so that when 
the claims came to be recognized a few were ready to 
respond. 

The American woman has had this and many 
other battles to fight in the way of reforms. In the 
forefront of this great pioneer work stands the name 
of that noble woman, Sarah J. Hale, of Philadelphia. 
It was she who thought out and urged upon the 
churches the pressing necessity for sending medical 
women to mission fields. She wrote editorials on 
the subject of woman’s medical work, for Godey’s 
Lady’s Book, of which she was then editor, and also 
communicated with eminent clergymen on the subject, 
many of whom expressed their sympathy with the 
movement. Two young women offered themselves for 
the work, but the time had not yet come. Mrs. Hale 
in her plans was in advance of the sentiment of the 
time, and it was a sad disappointment to her to realize 
this. But she lived to see her cherished plans executed 
some twenty years afterwards, and well does the writer 
remember spending a morning in her library and hear- 


i58 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


ing this story from her own lips, and her expressions 
of delight that her purposes were about to be realized 
by the appointment of Dr. Swain to India. 

Turning from this initiatory movement, let us take 
a glance at the initiatory movement in the foreign field. 
The first effort in the direction of training native women 
in medicine was made by Dr. J. L. Humphrey, a med¬ 
ical missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
stationed in Nainee Tal, India. In 1867 he began 
delivering medical lectures to a class of young women 
who had received some education in the Girls’ Or¬ 
phanage at Bareilly. A liberal minded Hindoo, familiar 
with the condition of his countrywomen, knowing 
something of the suffering that ensued from malprac¬ 
tice of the ignorant, superstitious native midwives and 
the hopeless agony of women stricken down by disease, 
proposed to Dr. Humphrey to furnish half the necessary 
funds, to develop what seemed to him a very necessary 
work, if some help could be obtained from the Gov¬ 
ernment. Application was made but finally with¬ 
drawn. The time had not fully come for that either: 
the Government could not see the necessity. But the 
missionary did, and so a class was formed, the first of 
its kind in the East, in Nainee Tal, May, 1869, con¬ 
sisting of nine women. Was it possible for Hindoo 
women, so long oppressed and downtrodden, without 
school, or college, or other educational advantage, to 
comprehend the science of medicine? Let the facts 
answer. At the close of a two years’ course of study 
four of these women, after examination before a board 
of English physicians—one of them the Inspector 
General of hospitals—were given certificates for the 
treatment of all ordinary diseases. The victory was 


WOMAN’S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 159 

won once for all. That certificate meant more for 
India and for the world of heathen women than the 
holders themselves thought or could comprehend. It 
meant a revolution of ideas, plans and practices, a blow 
at superstitions hoary with age, and to religious 
systems long opposed to the benevolent spirit of 
Christianity. 

It was just at this period that Dr. Swain arrived 
in India. Those who were watching the movement 
at home wondered if the doors so long barred would 
open to the touch of a stranger, and the prejudices of 
ages give way to the ministrations of a woman of an¬ 
other nationality. She at once commenced her work 
by establishing a dispensary and forming a medical 
class, consisting of fourteen girls, and was called at 
once to visit women and children of all classes of 
society, treating in her first few weeks one hundred 
and eight patients. 

Next came the necessity for a hospital, which was 
met by the generosity of a native Mohammedan prince, 
by the gift of a property worth some $15,000. Repairs 
were made on the house, and on January 1, 1874, this 
first hospital for the women of the Orient was open 
and ready to receive patients. Auspicious day! Like 
doves to the windows the women flocked to the hos¬ 
pital and dispensary, Hindoos, Mohammedans and 
Christians. Cards were printed in three different 
languages, bearing a verse of the blessed Bible, so 
that every patient received with her prescription some 
word about the great Healer of souls. The women 
were captured. “ May I not come here and stay 
awhile every year even if I am not sick ?” said one of 
the patients. “ Let me stay,” said another, “ for I 


i6o 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


would like to walk out in this beautiful garden; I 
cannot walk out at home, for my friends say I am 
very bad if I do.” The work thus auspiciously in¬ 
augurated commanded the attention of other missionary 
societies, and the trained physician soon became a 
necessity in every well-equipped mission in India. 

The experience of missionaries in China was iden¬ 
tical with that of their fellow-workers in India. The 
importunate cry came for medical workers from that 
old empire, and the women of Methodism, who had 
inaugurated this movement in India, were able to do 
the same for China. Dr. Combs, a resident of Phil¬ 
adelphia, and graduate of the Woman’s College in 
that city, was selected, and reaching Peking, the cap¬ 
ital, in the fall of 1873, opened the first hospital for 
women in 1875. The story is familiar to all conver¬ 
sant with missionary work, how Dr. Howard, a grad¬ 
uate of Ann Arbor, who had joined Dr. Combs, was 
called from Peking to Tientsin to attend Lady Li, 
wife of China’s prime minister, and how it resulted in 
opening official doors to the missionary and physi¬ 
cian. No restraint was put on Christian work, and 
Lady Li contributed liberally toward the expenses of 
establishing a woman’s hospital. 

It was a suggestive fact that one ol the finest 
heathen temples in the city was devoted to distinc¬ 
tively Christian medical work. Dr. Howard was called 
to attend the mother of Li Hung Chang, an aged wo¬ 
man, who died and left $1,000 for Dr. Howard’s work: 
the first bequest of a Chinese woman to Christian 
benevolence. We cannot trace the history of this 
movement in China further than to say that it seemed 
to meet a great need, and the woman physician is 


WOMAN’S medical work in missions. 161 

found to-day in many of the large cities of the empire, 
winning the hearts of Chinese women by the irresist¬ 
ible arguments of personal kindness and skilful medi¬ 
cal treatment. The dispensary and hospital, or its 
equivalent, a woman’s ward, became a necessity, and 
these are found wherever the medical missionary is 
found. Some of these have been endowed by a single 
person: as the Isabella Fisher Hospital in Tientsin, 
1881, by a Baltimore woman, by the gift of $5,000; 
the Woman’s Pavilion in Peking, by an Albany wo¬ 
man, by donating $3,000; the hospital of the Union 
Missionary Society at Shanghai, where land, building, 
furnishing, instruments, and the salary of a physician 
and nurse for some years were provided for at an 
expense of $35,000 by the munificence of Mrs. Mar¬ 
garet Williamson of New York, for whom the hospital 
is named. Others are supported by societies, such as 
the one in Canton, and the Woolston Memorial in 
Foochow. The United States may exclude the Chi¬ 
nese from her borders, and the Chinese may send all 
Americans out of their country, but above and beyond 
all political complications these hospitals will stand as 
monuments of the love and devotion of American 
Christian women for Chinese women. 

No more convincing proof of the divine origin 
and truth of our religion can be given than these 
benevolent institutions everywhere established through¬ 
out the heathen world. 

Medical work was the key that first opened Korea 
to the entrance of the gospel. Koreans have said that 
“even stone, wood and animals have had their feel¬ 
ings aroused'” by the benefits of medical missions in 
their country. Koreans follow their own sweet will in 
11 


Woman in Missions. 


162 woman in missions. 

taking medicine, on the principle that if a little medi¬ 
cine is good, taken three or four times a day, then how 
much better to take the entire bottle-full in half the 
allotted time, or all at once! The Presbyterian Church 
sent the first medical woman to Korea, who had the 
post of physician to the queen. She reached Seoul in 
1886. A representative of the Woman’s Foreign Mis¬ 
sionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
followed in 1887, and soon in that old hermit nation a 
woman’s hospital was erected. As soon as the king 
heard that such a building had been opened for the 
relief of the suffering women of his country he showed 
his appreciation by sending through his foreign office 
a name painted in royal colors to be hung on the gate, 
so that all persons would know the institution had the 
king’s hearty approval. 

As the women of Japan are not secluded, and are 
accessible to the ordinary physician, there is not the 
same need for the woman physician as in some other 
nations. In Kyoto a hospital and training-school for 
nurses constitute a branch of the Doshisha University. 
An American woman is at the head of this training- 
school. There are throughout the world 360 medical 
missionaries, of whom 80 are women. These medical 
women are now to be found in Turkey, China, India, 
Burmah, Ceylon, Korea, Persia, Egypt, Syria, Japan, 
Micronesia, and Africa, representing the following mis¬ 
sionary societies: Woman’s Board, Presbyterian, Meth¬ 
odist Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist Episcopal Church 
South, Woman’s Union, Protestant Episcopal, Lutheran, 
Southern Presbyterian, Seventh Day Baptist, United 
Brethren, Friends, Cumberland Presbyterian, Presby¬ 
terian Church of Canada, Presbyterian Church of Ire- 


woman's medical work in missions. 163 

land, Wesleyan, Church of England, Free Church of 
Scodand, Zenana Bible and Medical Missionary So¬ 
ciety of London, British Syrian Mission, and Society 
for the Propagation of the Gospel. The Presbyterian 
Church (North) has the largest number in the field: 
10 in China, 1 in Japan, 2 in Korea, 3 in India, 4 in 
Persia, and 1 in Syria—making 21. 

Miss Eddy, of this Society, daughter of a Syrian 
missionary, having graduated last spring at the New 
York College, has spent several years in fitting herself 
for medical work among the women of Syria. She is 
the first woman to take the complete course of study 
under Dr. Herman Knapp, the celebrated oculist, and 
is the first medical woman in that field. 

Dr. Mary Bradford, of Persia, also connected with' 
the Presbyterian Church, has had a remarkable record. 
During the past year she stood heroically at her post 
in the midst of cholera epidemic. All Europeans had 
fled from the city; hotels, banks and telegraph-offices 
were closed; but the American lady doctor remained. 
The Armenian Khalifa, or archbishop, who had been 
an inveterate enemy of missionaries, opposing their 
work and denouncing them everywhere, was taken 
sick with the cholera and sent for the missionary doc¬ 
tor. Miss Bradford did not hesitate for a moment. 
She magnanimously forgot the man’s previous animos¬ 
ity and hastened to his bedside. She succeeded in 
arresting the disease. Her skill and care are given 
equally to the wife of the Shah and to the poorest 
peasant woman. 

The Woman’s Board has eight physicians, located 
as follows: 2 in Japan, 1 in India — Dr. Root, who 
in one year treated over 19,000 cases—and another 


164 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


under appointment for India; 1 in China and another 
accepted for China, and 2 in Turkey. Two other 
names not found in the list of missionaries deserve 
mention : Dr. Caroline Hamilton, a graduate of the 
New York Medical College, and afterwards an instruc¬ 
tor in the institution, is a resident physician in Aintab 
College, supported by the generosity of a woman in 
this country. She cooperates in missionary work. 
Dr. Gurubai Karmarkar, who came from Bombay, 
graduated from the college in Philadelphia, and after a 
year at hospital work has returned to India to practise 
among her countrywomen, and is said to be a good 
physician and devoted Christian woman. One of the 
physicians of this Board is occupying a peculiarly iso¬ 
lated outpost, in Kalgan, on the borders of Mongolia; 
and in addition to these the American Board has one 
in North China and one in Ceylon. 

The Baptist Board has nine medical missionaries : 
two in India, two in China, five in Burmah. Four of 
these are under the Western section and five under the 
Eastern Board. 

The Methodist Board has fourteen, located as fol¬ 
lows: three in Tientsin, one in Tsunhwa, three in Foo¬ 
chow and one in Chinkiang, China, five in India and 
one in Seoul, Korea. 

These physicians are ministering annually to about 
half a million of native women. 

In England a somewhat different course has been 
pursued. In the early history of this work women were 
sent out with only a partial medical training. This led 
to considerable discussion and the request from mis¬ 
sionary societies that only fully qualified physicians be 
sent. Only in January last a Medical Missionary Con- 


WOMAN'S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 165 

ference was held in Bombay at which resolutions were 
passed emphasizing the fact that every medical mis¬ 
sionary should be thoroughly equipped professionally, 
and, as this work is only a means to an end, the spirit¬ 
ual work should be kept always prominent. 

Woman’s medical movement in England owes its 
origin to the efforts of Dr. William Elmslie, the first 
medical missionary to Kashmir. After spending some 
years in that country Dr. Elmslie returned to England 
in 1870 greatly impressed with the importance of secu¬ 
ring medical aid for women. He agitated the subject 
in his public addresses and through the press. 

The Indian Female Normal School Society printed 
a statement, concerning the great needs, which fell into 
the hands of Miss Fanny J. Butler, who had for some 
time cherished a desire for medical work. She offered 
herself and was accepted, and immediately entered the 
London School of Medicine, just then transferred from 
Edinburgh. She was the first enrolled student. The 
second was Miss Jane Waterson, who is now laboring 
in South Africa, sent out by the Church of Scotland. 
To Miss Butler belongs the honor of being the first 
fully qualified English medical woman sent to a foreign 
field. She was sent to Bhagalpur, where she spent six 
years, then was transferred to Kashmir, where she gave 
her life for the women. Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop, who 
visited her in her isolated home, says: “Just before 
the death of Dr. Fanny Butler it was a terrible sight to 
see the way in which the women pressed upon her at 
the dispensary door, which was kept by two men out¬ 
side and another inside. The crush was so great as 
sometimes to overpower the men and precipitate the 
women bodily into the consulting room. The evil 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


166 

odors, the heat, the unsanitary conditions in which 
Miss Butler did her noble work of healing and telling 
of the Healer of souls were, I believe, the cause of the 
sacrifice of her life.” 

In London, at present, there are twenty-six wo¬ 
men, in Edinburgh twenty-two, and in Glasgow eigh¬ 
teen, or sixty-six in all, who are studying medicine for 
the foreign field; and in the field now, holding full 
British qualifications, are nineteen women, of whom 
sixteen are in India, two in China, and one in Korea. 

WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME RESULTS OF WOMAN’S 
MEDICAL WORK? 

A Hindoo recently stated one of the results clearly 
in a conversation with a missionary when he said, 
“ What we dread is the presence of your Christian 
women, for they are winning our homes, and of your 
Christian physicians, for they are winning our hearts.” 
Through the humane and Christ-like spirit of this work 
many are brought under the influence of Christianity. 

On the mountains overlooking the Dead Sea is 
the turbulent, half-rebellious, city of Kerak. A few 
years ago Mr. Lethaby, an uneducated and poor lay¬ 
man, was sent there. He was abused, threatened, 
and would have been killed long ago but for his heroic 
wife, who, although not having a medical education, 
had knowledge enough to treat simple diseases, and so 
ingratiated herself with the people that they protect 
her and her husband where no foreigner, nor even an 
official of the Turkish Government, would be safe. 
And there she has labored for body and soul together, 
cut off from the world, but in direct communication 
with heaven. 


WOMAN’S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 167 

Medical work has been a spur to the higher edu¬ 
cation of women. It has given woman a higher ideal 
of life, for every one treated in a hospital learns some¬ 
thing of cleanliness and care of the sick, and carries 
away a treasure of new ideas which cannot fail to 
bring comfort and health to cheerless homes. This 
work has also developed the medical and training- 
school on native soil and given employment for native 
Christian girls and women. 

Admission for female students was asked for in 
the Indian medical colleges. The universities, led by 
that of Madras, opened their doors to medical students, 
who were welcomed and treated with uniform respect 
by students and professors, native as well as foreign— 
“a fact,” says Bishop Thoburn, “gratefully recorded 
in view of the very different treatment women have 
received from Western medical colleges.” In the 
medical school established in 1884 at Agra, an insti¬ 
tution belonging to the Government of India but un¬ 
der missionary direction, many women from mission 
schools have taken a course of medicine and gradua¬ 
ted with honor. Interest in this movement so developed 
that scholarships were offered by missionary societies, 
and non-Christian municipal boards made appropria¬ 
tions ; native princes, also, have promised support, and 
offered large salaries to women students on condition 
they would give a number of years to practice in their 
dominions. Seven-eighths of the students here are 
Christian women. One of the first to graduate was a 
Hindoo widow, who passed a fine examination and 
stood first among the women of her class. 

In the history of the Methodist Mission in India 
a little waif of a girl was picked up and taken to the 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


168 

Girls’ Orphanage in Bareilly. The support of this 
child was assumed by some friends in New York. 
With proper care she developed physically, and was 
put in school, became a bright student, and having 
finished the prescribed course was selected as one to 
enter the Agra school as a medical student. She 
graduated at the head of her class, and was so pro¬ 
ficient that her case was noticed by the India secular 
papers. She was selected to take charge of the wo¬ 
man’s department of a Government hospital and has 
now been in charge about two years, and the Eng¬ 
lish surgeon inspecting her work acknowledged that 
her hospital was one of the best conducted institu¬ 
tions in Northern India. Could the most sanguine 
have imagined that in twenty-five years there should 
be such a revolution in sentiment that a native Chris¬ 
tian woman should occupy such a position ! 

Another result has been the awakening of a de¬ 
sire on the part of women both in China and India to 
come out from their surroundings, to see something 
of the great world, that they might secure better ad¬ 
vantages. Among this number, Mrs. Josee, a Brah¬ 
min woman, broke away from all her associations, 
social and religious, and came to America. She 
graduated at the Philadelphia Medical College in 1886, 
the first Hindoo graduate of a medical college. She 
returned home and was under appointment by the 
court of the native State of Kolapore as resident 
physician in the women’s ward of the Albert Edward 
Hospital: but the rigorous climate of our country 
had been too severe, and she died on the threshold of 
what many hoped would be a brilliant career. 

Another native of India, Miss Jaganadham, has 


WOMAN’S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 169 

recently completed her studies in Scotland with dis¬ 
tinguished honors and spent two years in a school 
of surgery, and has been appointed by the Indian 
Government as the head of the Woman’s Hospital in 
Bombay. 

The first girl brought up by her own parents in 
all Central and Western China with unbound feet, 
daughter of a Bible woman, is now a medical student in 
the University of Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Miss Hu 
King Eng, of Foochow, daughter of a native clergy¬ 
man, is about completing her studies in the Phil¬ 
adelphia College, expecting to return to her native 
country to practise. 

Medical work has awakened among wealthy 
natives a desire to aid it by their contributions. A few 
years ago a wealthy Parsee in Bombay gave $50,000 to 
build a hospital for women and children. An Indian 
woman placed at the disposal of the Government 
$60,000 for carrying on women’s medical work in the 
Province of Bengal. Another has donated six thou¬ 
sand dollars for the erection of a hospital for women at 
Balermpore. Other cases might be mentioned. 

One of the greatest results has been the develop¬ 
ment of the National Association for Supplying Female 
Medical Aid for the Women of India, popularly 
known as the “ Lady Dufierin ” movement. There is 
a touch of romance in the story of its beginnings. In 
the year 1881 a medical woman from the city of Luck¬ 
now was called to Poona to attend the wife of a native 
prince. The physician remained with her royal patient 
for several weeks, and through her skill and care the 
princess recovered. When about to leave the princess 
requested a private interview, and said, “You are in- 


I/O 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


tending to go to England, and I want you to tell the 
Queen, the prince and princess of Wales and the 
men and women of England what the women of 
India suffer when they are sick. Will you promise 
me ?” She then requested the physician to write the 
message, and write it small, “for” said she, “ I want to 
put it in a locket, and you are to wear it around your 
neck until you see our great empress, and you are to 
give it to her yourself; you are not to send it by an¬ 
other.” Having suffered herself, and carrying on her bur¬ 
dened heart the suffering of her sisters, she was intensely 
in earnest that her message should be heeded. Weeks 
rolled on, and the missionary physician reached Eng¬ 
land : she had the privilege of an interview with the 
Queen, and delivered the locket with its precious mes¬ 
sage. Her Majesty was profoundly impressed, and 
promised that something should be done, exclaiming, 
“ We had no idea it was as bad as this!” This was 
just at the time Lord Dufferin was appointed Governor 
General of India. The Queen had an interview with 
Lady Dufferin and impressed upon her the importance 
of making an effort to give medical help to the wo¬ 
men. As soon as she reached India she conferred 
with prominent women as to the advisability of such 
a scheme and drew up a prospectus, which was tran¬ 
slated into several dialects and sent through the coun¬ 
try. The appeal was favorably received, and. in 
time the Association was formed. Its object is to 
provide tuition and medical relief by supplying med¬ 
ical missionaries, trained nurses, and the establish¬ 
ment, under female superintendence, of dispensaries 
and cottage hospitals for the treatment of women and 
children. The cause has been espoused with great 


WOMAN’S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 171 

enthusiasm, and liberal contributions have been made 
for its support. 

The Association is philanthropic, not missionary, 
as its employees are pledged not to interfere in any way 
with the religious beliefs of the patients; but, religiously 
neutral as it is, it depends largely for its success on 
Christian women, for only girls that had been educated 
in the various mission schools were found prepared to 
avail themselves of the opportunity offered. The funds 
of this association now amount to nearly half a million 
of dollars, by means of which one hundred and three 
well-qualified physicians are kept at work, and about 
two hundred and forty more are studying medicine in 
India and England. About half a million women 
receive help through this agency. Forty-eight hos¬ 
pitals and dispensaries, nine of which are in native 
states, are supported, and thirteen physicians are in 
charge. 

Another result has been the creation of a sentiment 
by this work throughout India which has led to the 
modification of the marriage laws. Such revelations of 
inhumanity connected with child marriages were 
brought to light that one of the physicians connected 
with the Methodist Church drew up a petition, which 
was signed by fifty-five women physicians and pre¬ 
sented to the Government, pleading that the marriage¬ 
able age of girls be raised to fourteen years. While 
the Government was flooded with petitions and memo¬ 
rials from native Christians, Hindoo women, and Mis¬ 
sionaries, it is stated that nearly all the speakers in the 
Legislative Council referred to the facts presented in 
this memorial—which had great influence in bringing 
about the change, and raising the age to twelve years; 


172 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


true, not all that was asked was gained, but this was 
undoubtedly the most important step taken in the do¬ 
mestic and social life of the people since the abolish¬ 
ment of suttee in 1829. 

The influence of this work is permeating all lands. 
Dr. Post, of Syria, says, “ In Beirut a hospital for 
certain diseases of women has been opened at the ex¬ 
pense of the Government. In Bethlehem and Jerusa¬ 
lem, around which cluster so many sacred associations, 
the woman physician is found administering to hun¬ 
dreds and thousands of patients. 

“Not far from the reputed house of Simon the 
Tanner is a stately stone building, one of the finest 
in Jaffa. It is the hospital for which the late Miss 
Mangan gave her energies while living. In her effort 
to overcome the opposition of the authorities to 
this most benevolent work she died, a martyr to her 
zeal.” 

Within a few years the usefulness of nurses and 
their peculiar access to the sick have attracted the at¬ 
tention of a number of consecrated women of means. 
Mrs. Merdith’s far-reaching vision has looked across 
the oceans, and she has met a long felt want by estab¬ 
lishing a nurses’ institution in Jerusalem from which 
she proposes to supply attendants for the poor gratuit¬ 
ously, and at moderate rates for those able to pay. 
Miss Bouchart, of Damascus, a lady of fortune and 
large-hearted benevolence, personally conducts a most 
useful work of this kind in Damascus. She has under 
her direction a native physician, a graduate of the Bei¬ 
rut College, a thoroughly trained nurse, to attend to 
this department of work.” 

Not only does medical work open the homes and 


WOMAN’S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 173 

hearts of the inmates to the preaching of Christ, it does 
much in removing opposition on the part of male rela¬ 
tives and friends, and so becomes a valuable adjunct to 
other departments of mission work. It gives practical 
demonstration of the difference between Christianity 
and false religions. 

An Indian paper, commenting on a successful op¬ 
eration performed by a lady physician in the city of 
Lucknow, said, “ The age of miracles is not past, for 
Jesus Christ is still working miracles through the lady 
doctors.” 

No wonder that in our station at China they called 
the one who had so wonderfully helped them “ a living 
Buddha and in another place an engraving was made 
of a surgical operation, and published in one of their 
papers, as an illustrated account of the foreign lady’s 
amazing skill. In the city of Foochow it was with 
difficulty the physician could prevent the people from 
falling down and worshipping her as she passed through 
♦ the streets. These heroic women, who have gone from 
homes of culture and Christian surroundings, have 
braved many dangers, faced infection in all forms, been 
exposed to all weathers, have come in contact with idol¬ 
atrous rites, have had their sensibilities shocked by the 
inhumanity of humanity, have performed the duties not 
only of physician, but of nurse and cook; with loving 
sympathy they have administered to all castes and con¬ 
ditions, have given heathen women a loftier conception 
of womanhood and motherhood, have comforted the 
living, and spoken tender and loving words to the 
dying. 

In the city of Calcutta a native woman was ill in 
one of the hospitals. Her mind wandered, and she was 


174 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


heard to say pathetically, “I am sitting on the sea¬ 
shore, a storm is approaching, the tide is rising. My 
mind is troubled. Alas ! I shall perish.” She regained 
consciousness to find beside her a “ beloved physician,” 
who with loving words pointed her to a “ refuge in the 
time of storm.” 

Thus the Orient feels the touch of the Divine 
Healer. 


ENGLISH METHODIST DEACONESSES. 1 75 


THE WORK OF DEACOHESSES* 

METHODIST DEACONESSES IN ENG¬ 
LAND. 

BY “ SISTER DORA ” STEPHENSON. 

Much is heard in the present day about woman’s 
sphere and woman’s rights. In the olden days, when 
the master lived among his men, when the lord of 
the manor was the head of the clan and the father 
of his people, there was ample employment for the 
women in their homes. The flax had to be spun, the 
linen woven, the tapestry hangings embroidered, the 
bread baked, the household supplies repleted by the 
women of the family; with her own fair hand the lady— 
the loaf-giver—distributed at her own gate the doles 
which helped the poor and the sick on her estate. 

But things have changed. The introduction of 
machinery has brought about a new order. The capi¬ 
talist lives away from his workshop in his pleasant 
suburban home; the relationship between him and his 
employee is purely a business one: the men are “ hands.” 
The thought that his wealth and privilege imply a 
duty to the bodies and souls of his workers, and that 
he should be to them a friend and adviser, has almost 
gone. 

And the women of the household—the ladies of 
the land—have little occupation for heart or hand, and 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


176 

so spend their lives too often in a vain endeavor to 
“ kill time.” 

But there are many women who yearn after a 
higher life—women whose hearts go out to the op¬ 
pressed and miserable and who long to devote their 
time to the amelioration of human wretchedness. Most 
of all is this true of the Christian woman who feels it 
the great debt she owes to her Saviour, who has re¬ 
deemed her from the life of a slave and placed her by 
the side of man as friend and co-worker. 

To-day the women of all the churches are en¬ 
tering different branches of service, and great re¬ 
sults have already been obtained by those who give 
their spare time to good works along different lines. 
The Woman’s Home and Foreign Missionary Societies 
are sending light and healing to their unenlightened 
sisters at home and abroad. Women are to the front 
in the advancement of temperance and social purity, 
and of preventive work of all sorts among the young. 

But the need of consecrated helpers is so great that 
it was felt in England that the time had come when 
women should be asked to give not only some time, 
but their whole time to this work ; and in response to 
this call, developing slowly through twenty years, our 
Methodist Deaconesses have answered. 

WHAT IS A DEACONESS? 

As her name implies, she is a servant—a servant 
in a three-fold capacity. She is 

1. The servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

2. The servant of the poor, the sick, the children 
and the lost, for Christ’s sake. 

3. The servant each of the other. 


ENGLISH METHODIST DEACONESSES. 177 

She is not a substitute. The ladies of the church¬ 
es must not think that she is to take their place. They 
will be needed as much as ever to carry on the 
good work to which they have devoted themselves. 
Rather they must rally around her, “ hold up her 
handsand probably in turn they will find, with her, 
fresh fields in which their energies may have scope, and 
take fresh impetus from her enthusiasm and experi¬ 
ence. 

Neither is the deaconess a proxy. She is no paid 
servant of the church, hired by some lady or ladies to 
do the difficult work from which they shrink, and whose 
hire serves as a salve to a troubled conscience. She is 
a servant—a bond-servant—but a servant of the Christ 
to whom she owes and gives her all. 

There are certain things which distinguish the 
deaconess from other workers : 

First. She believes herself called of God to her 
work, and believes she has a vocation, though no vow 
is demanded or given. 

Second. She is a trained worker. 

Third. She serves a long probation. 

Fourth . She is formally set apart to her work in a 
solemn dedication service. 

Fifth. She lives usually in a community, or Dea¬ 
coness Home. 

Sixth. She is an unsalaried worker. She is sup¬ 
ported, if necessary, but is never paid for her services. 

Generally she wears a simple uniform dress; but 
this is not deemed absolutely essential, though most 
desirable. 

If we were considering the question of deacon¬ 
esses in general, in England, one would be glad to say 
12 


Woman in Missions. 


i;8 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


much of the grand institution at Mildmay, which is 
allied closely, though in no narrow, sectarian spirit, 
with the Evangelical party in the Established Church 
of England. And, again, mention should be made of 
the good work done by the Deaconess Institute founded 
by Dr. Lazeron at Tottenham, which is identified with 
Evangelical Nonconformity. From both these institu¬ 
tions streams of blessing have flowed which have surely 
been “ for the healing of the nationand one would 
like to linger on details of their work. But it is of the 
Methodist Deaconesses we are now especially thinking, 
and some little knowledge of the growth of this order 
may be interesting and profitable. 

It was among the children that our Methodist 
Deaconesses in England began their labors. Twenty- 
four years ago the Children’s Home, Orphanage and 
Refuge was founded in London. It was a simple 
attempt of a young Methodist minister to lift up some 
few of the children who were ready to perish in the 
misery and vice of our great metropolis. He gathered 
a few poor lads into a humble cottage, and tried there, 
by the influence of home, of work, and, most of all, of 
the religion of Jesus, to win them for God. Soon the 
movement won friends, financial help was given in¬ 
creasingly, and at the end of twelve months it was 
necessary to enlarge the Home. A second cottage 
was taken, where a second group was housed—for it 
was felt that at all costs the family idea must be main¬ 
tained. But who was to take charge of these lads? 
Who could best “mother” the boys? Then the 
thought came, given surely by the Good Spirit, “Why 
not ask women of refinement and position to come 
and, for Christ’s sake, give themselves to this work of 


ENGLISH METHODIST DEACONESSES. 179 

caring for humanity’s orphans ?” One such lady came, 
and through the years, with the growth of the work, 
others have followed, until now nearly sixty such wo¬ 
men are engaged in the Children’s Home. They are 
all voluntary workers; some few are women of private 
means, who-can support themselves; others require to 
be set free to work, and such are supported; but no one 
asks for a salary. They give their time and strength 
and love to the children for the sake of the children’s 
Redeemer, and their constant aim is to win the souls 
of the children for the Saviour so that their lives will 
be given to him. 

These “ Sisters of the Children,” as this branch of 
the Methodist Deaconesses is called, spend two years in 
probation and training. They attend lectures on Bible 
Study, on the Christian Evidences, on Church History. 
They also take two courses of lectures on nursing and 
simple medicine, and they all follow a prescribed course 
of reading which will help them in their work. Some 
women have already given twenty years to the work, 
while others have spent a longer or shorter time in the 
field; and by God’s blessing more than 3,000 children 
have been uplifted and helped, of whom the large ma¬ 
jority are now respectable citizens, while more than 
fifty-six per cent, are faithful members of the church of 
Christ and earnest workers in his vineyard. The Sis¬ 
ters of the Children have also always found some time 
for outside mission work, though their time is largely 
taken up in the Homes of which they have charge. 

To-day in different parts of England other branches 
of the order of Deaconesses have grown up. In the 
West London Methodist Mission the Sisters of the 
People are laboring among the poor, the sick and the 


i8o 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


lost; and among the rich as well. Sometimes they 
find that their hardest task is to reach the wealthy, who 
are often far away from God. 

They undertake all kind of work for the uplifting 
of the people: they visit in the homes; they nurse the 
sick; they try to befriend the lonely young men and 
women of the city business houses, who too often are 
driven into sin by the thought that no one cares what 
they do, that no one extends to them the right hand of 
fellowship as they walk in slippery places. They con¬ 
duct meetings for men, and meetings for women; and 
a day nursery is open, all the week round, for babies. 
Indeed, no branch of service is there in which the 
sisters are not active, and they find that, having left all 
to follow Christ in his mission of mercy to the sin- 
stricken world, he himself guides them and blesses 
them in their labors. 

At the East London Mission a similar band of 
devoted women is at work, but they are not so fully 
organized and do not call themselves Sisters or Dea¬ 
conesses, though they fulfil to a great extent the same 
ideal. In Manchester and elsewhere similar groups of 
workers have been formed ; and altogether there are 
now about one hundred and forty of these unsalaried, 
trained women at work. 

But it was felt that a time had come when a Train¬ 
ing Home should be established where women could 
have definite preparation and training, and whence they 
could go at the end of twelve months to any field of 
labor where a deaconess was required. By the gener¬ 
osity of a wealthy Methodist gentleman a house was 
taken and furnished near Victoria Park, and the Prin¬ 
cipal of the Children’s Home became the Warden of 


ENGLISH METHODIST DEACONESSES. l8l 


the Wesley Deaconess Institute. The ladies who come 
there spend twelve months in study and in gaining 
practical experience of work; they then spend a second 
year in actual labor; and if at the end of that time 
they seem suited to the work, and find God is blessing 
them in it, they are formally consecrated or set apart in 
a simple but solemn dedication service. The Wesley 
Deaconesses are growing rapidly in number; already 
two branch Homes have been established, and it seems 
as though this humble plant may grow into a great 
tree whose leaves shall be for the healing of the nations. 
Already about twenty have passed through the Train¬ 
ing Home and are now at work in different parts of the 
country, while about fifteen probationers are in resi¬ 
dence. God’s blessing has been upon us. He has 
sent the right women. He is raising up friends and 
sympathizers, and is giving us financial help. 

We have not yet received any official recognition 
by the Conference, though the ministers regard us gen¬ 
erally with kindliness and welcome us in the field. 

The fields are white unto the harvest. A little 
band of workers have entered the field. Many more 
are at the gates asking to be permitted to enter. We 
need thousands insteads of scores; there is work for 
many hearts and hands, and the laborers are few. 

We need your sympathy. Rally round us, cheer 
us by your interest and help. 

“ Oh it is hard to work for God, 

To rise and take our part 
Upon this battlefield of earth, 

And not sometimes lose heart.” 

Most of all we ask you to pray for us, that so the arms 
of our hands may be made strong by the hands of the 


i 82 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


mighty God of Jacob. He is our Helper; it is only as 
he blesses us that our work can prosper. We believe 
he has called us to minister to him in the person of 
suffering and sinning humanity. In the tearful eyes of 
a sorrowful, homeless bairn we see Jesus. Through 
the sick and suffering body of one of his brethren we 
wait on Him. And when we go to those who are per¬ 
ishing in degradation and sin, and try to lend a hand to 
lead them to the Helper and Healer, we hear the voice 
of Jesus in our ears, saying, “ Inasmuch as ye do it unto 
one of the least of these my brethren ye do it unto 
me.” 


DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 

BY MRS. LUCY RYDER MEYER. 

Deaconesses are trained, unsalaried and cos¬ 
tumed women, providentially free—sometimes most 
sadly free—from the responsibilities that occupy the 
time of most women, banding themselves together to 
aid and supplement other agencies in carrying the 
gospel in all practical, helpful ways to those who have it 
not. They differ from Bible women in that they must 
be trained. Bible women, and indeed all other mission¬ 
aries, may be trained, but deaconesses must be. They 
are costumed, and unsalaried, and they usually live in 
communities called Homes. In addition to this, the 
deaconess in all denominations usually has formal 
churchly recognition and authorization. She is, in a 
special sense—as was Phoebe, whom Paul called a 
“ diakonos” and whom our revisers have done the 



DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 183 

tardy justice of calling a deaconess in the margin—a 
servant of the church. 

An illustration sometimes gives a better idea than 
a definition. Let me tell you something of the work 
deaconesses do. 

Some little time ago, in answer to an urgent de¬ 
mand, one of our Chicago deaconesses was taken by an 
agent of the Humane Society to a German family where 
eight people were living in one room. The father, mo¬ 
ther and two oldest children were sick with typhoid 
fever, and the sick and well together were occupying 
two beds. Unless one has witnessed with his own eyes 
similar suffering and degradation it is impossible to 
get any conception of it. The deaconess, a trained 
nurse, told me that until she could procure a third 
bed she was obliged to reach over the sick mother and 
one child in order to administer medicine to the eleven- 
year-old girl, lying at the back of one of the beds in a 
raging fever. For nine days and nights the nurse 
stayed in that room, with only occasional snatches of 
rest in the house of a compassionate neighbor who 
cleared out a room for her transient occupancy. Du¬ 
ring that time the father and daughter died, but the 
others recovered. 

Imagine this refined and sensitive woman, only 
twenty-five years old, absolutely alone with that family. 
The story of the last night of the little girl’s life, as 
the nurse rehearsed it to me, is too harrowing to re¬ 
peat. She says of it herself, “ What I went through 
it would be impossible to tell; no amount of money 
would have kept me at my post, but our motto, ‘ For 
Jesus’ sake,’ gave me strength.” 

The deaconess, a single instance of whose life I 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


184 

have given, was a graduated nurse; she had been twen¬ 
ty months in the hospital learning the technicalities of 
her profession. She could have practised as a private 
nurse, earning her $20 to $25 per week. She did not 
demand any pay for her services—you can well under¬ 
stand how she could not—and if she had been paid at 
the highest rate ever given a professional nurse not a 
penny would have gone into her own pocket; it would 
all have been brought to the Deaconess Home in 
which she lives and out from which she goes to these 
cases. For herself, she receives her support, a com¬ 
fortable but simple living, her clothes from a common 
store-room, and two dollars per month allowance for 
pocket money. She wears a costume not very dif¬ 
ferent from the dress of an ordinary woman. Her hair 
is not cut, nor is her face shrouded in white bands, 
but her dress is sufficiently marked for her recognition 
and protection, and of an exceedingly economical kind. 
She is a volunteer. If at any time she should desire to 
leave the work, either to return to her home, to accept 
a salaried position, or to marry, she is entirely free to 
do so without even a day’s warning ; no dishonor or 
discredit will in any way attach to her for the act. 

This is a typical case of deaconess work, yet there 
are such variations as would naturally occur in a great 
institution, since various lines of work can be carried 
on to better advantage than by concentraing every effort 
on one point. 

Not all deaconesses are nurses. Some are pastors’ 
assistants ; some canvass in districts, not only to dis¬ 
cover physical need, but also to discover and relieve 
social, moral and spiritual wants. Some are matrons 
and teachers in the biblical and nursing schools that 


DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 185 

feed the Homes. All are alike, however, in their 
essential characteristics: all are trained, all are cos¬ 
tumed, all are volunteers, all, the highest as well as the 
lowest, are entirely unsalaried, and nearly all live in 
communities—our “ Homes.” 

Deaconesses are trained, whether they go as gen¬ 
eral workers or nurses. Much of the success of their 
work is due to this fact. The recognition of the wis¬ 
dom and economy of spending time and strength in 
training, whatever be the activity towards which any 
worker looks, is a characteristic of our times. The old 
way of training school-teachers was to thrust them out 
into the actual work of teaching and let them learn by 
the hardest experiences, through their blunders and fail¬ 
ures ; a painful process to the teacher, and an expensive 
one to the unfortunate children upon whom she experi¬ 
mented. But the normal schools that have sprung up 
all over our land tell of a better way in secular teaching, 
a way in which theory and practice and kindly criticism 
go hand in hand. And, if the work of a teacher is too 
responsible to be entrusted to novices, what shall we 
say of those who have to meet confessedly the most 
perplexing and difficult social and religious problems ? 

But we have adopted the principle of sending out 
only trained workers, not from theory only, but from 
experience. When our organization first began its 
work in this city, for it was in Chicago that the work 
in the Methodist Church in this country orginated, the 
demand for nurses, especially, was so great that our 
judgment yielded to our sympathy and we sent women 
that were not thoroughly trained to care for the sick. 
A very short experience, however, convinced us that 
such a course, while seemingly imperative, was neither 


86 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


kind nor economical. It was not kind to our patients, 
it was not safe for the nurses themselves—remember, 
a large proportion of the cases they dealt with were 
actively or insidiously contagious, it did not reflect honor 
upon or beget confidence in the institution that sent them 
out. And we soon found that training in the know¬ 
ledge of the Bible and in methods of work was quite 
as necessary for those who went to the relief of moral 
degradation and want. 

The physical suffering and need of the poorer 
classes is far more easily comprehended than their 
mental and moral destitution, but the latter is quite as 
real, quite as appalling in its results, and even more 
difficult to deal with. It does not take much wisdom 
to be good, fortunately, but it requires a good deal of 
wisdom to do good. A worker among the poorer 
classes of our city must be able to read character, to 
take in the environment of a case, a volume at a 
glance. We could not entrust the relieving of distress 
to untrained women; intuition will do a great deal, 
but intuition will not take the place of training. Not 
all cases are as transparent as that of the poor woman 
we were trying to help a few weeks ago, who—sup¬ 
posing it would make some difference, in which how¬ 
ever she was mistaken—frankly admitted the first even¬ 
ing that she was a Catholic. But the next morning, 
learning that our institution was Protestant, with a 
Methodist tint, she emphatically asserted that she was 
not a Catholic at all, she was an Episcopalian, and her 
husband was Lutheran. Besides, she was a Methodist 
now! 

Deaconesses wear a costume: for instant recogni¬ 
tion, for economy, for accessibility to the poor. We 


DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. l8> 

concede there is something of artificiality in our conven¬ 
tional—not conventual—dress. We willingly admit 
that in a natural and normal state of society each mem¬ 
ber should have the privilege of individuality in dress, 
the same as in her words. But the organic whole of 
society—for social science has just discovered what 
Christ taught 2,000 years ago, that society is a unit, 
every member of which is bound to every other mem¬ 
ber by a thousand indissoluble ties—is not, at present, 
in a normal state. The segregation of classes, which is 
so marked a characteristic of even American society, is 
not normal. The outbreaking moral diseases of some 
of the poor, the effeminacy and self-seeking of some of 
the rich, are not normal conditions. A wise physician 
charged with the care of a well person needs to do 
nothing but advise a simple and natural life ; called to 
the bedside of the sick, we find him pursuing a totally 
different course: making use of artificial means—of the 
plaster cast, or the penetrating knife. So, in dealing 
with the open wounds and sores of the social body of a 
great city, we are justified in adopting some peculiari¬ 
ties in our work. The only criterion by which we can 
be judged is, Do they help us in helping our patients ? 
We do not deny that it does involve some little self- 
denial to don our serge bonnets. We feel that we too, 
as well as you, ladies, have a right to retain our indi¬ 
viduality in dress, to array ourselves in bright colors 
and soft textures; but the most sacred right a human 
being can have, after all, is the right to give up her 
rights, if by so doing a greater good will come to hu¬ 
manity. We wear our uniform for our work’s sake. 
We are not in ordinary family and social life; we are 
providentially free from the duties and responsibilities— 


188 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


blessed though they are—that bind most women to their 
homes and their friends, so that we can devote our¬ 
selves to this work as others cannot. And because of 
certain manifest advantages we wear the' costume, re¬ 
linquishing the bright colors and bright textures to 
those whose vocation in life is so different, and to the 
oft-quoted flowers and birds and sunset clouds, in 
whom, however, let me say in passing, there abides no 
moral quality, and in whose gorgeous array there is not 
involved the needless expenditure of money which in 
the present abnormal state of our social body is so cer¬ 
tainly and constantly convertible into terms of redeemed 
souls. Moreover, we have a conviction, based on expe¬ 
rience, that our women are safer wearing the costume. 
You know very well there are sections of many large 
cities where it is not safe for a well-dressed person to 
be seen alone after nightfall. Our deaconesses, espe¬ 
cially the nurses, are actually called into these localities, 
not only by day, but by night. We have never yet 
prohibited them from going alone into any part of the 
city in any of the twenty-four hours of the day. They 
are necessarily associated with all kinds of women, they 
perform their labor of love in all kinds of houses; they 
would not be safe from physical harm or social suspi¬ 
cion had they not some distinguishing characteristic in 
their garb. ^ This is, indeed, the one great reason why 
we wear the costume, but there are other excellent rea¬ 
sons : it is economical; it prevents hurts and griev¬ 
ances in the Home, where some are and will be cloth¬ 
ing themselves out of an income which renders them 
independent while others are dependent upon gar¬ 
ments furnished by the Home; it gives an esprit 
de corps to our workers. What the blue coat of 


DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 189 

the United States soldier is to him the white ties and 
serge bonnets are to us. 

But notice further. Deaconesses are volunteers, 
and this simple fact at once places our work on a plane 
which raises it above whole classes of motives appeal¬ 
ing to ordinary workers. Our women come when they 
will — provided they will submit themselves to the 
requirements of training, etc. — they go when they 
please. That is, theoretically they “ go ”—actually they 
stay. The work has been established in our church 
now more than six years, and it numbers more than 
three hundred women, and one of the great surprises 
in connection with it has been that, while some have 
resigned on account of health, so few have left. Some 
have gone home to care for dependent parents, four 
have been married in our parlors or chapels, but most 
of them stay by the work. We ask but one question 
of importance, of women desiring to become deacon¬ 
esses, and that is, “ Do you believe God has called you 
to the work ?” And if God calls them they will stay. 
I used to fear that money inducements would affect our 
workers, especially our nurses; but, though offers of 
salaried positions have frequently been made them, 
very rarely has there been a response, even when the 
position has been associated with other philanthropic 
work. Our women use money mostly to give it away, 
and the longer they remain with us the more fully does 
the power of money as a motive seem to vanish from 
their lives. 

This brings me to the subject of unsalaried work. 
As I have before stated, deaconesses are entirely and 
comfortably supported in their work ; they have the 
guarantee of support and all needed care in sickness or 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


I90 

old age; they have their allowance for pin-money; but 
they are entirely unsalaried. Much might be said in 
favor of our support coming as it does. It entirely 
relieves us of all questions concerning dress—how our 
garments are to be obtained and paid for, and how 
they are to be made. We give the matter not a single 
thought. Blessed relief! One might almost be tempt¬ 
ed to become a deaconess from this motive alone. We 
have that thing most necessary for our work, 

“ A heart at leisure from itself 
To soothe and sympathize.” 

It gives us accessibility to the poor. We take no 
vows of poverty—we take no vows of any kind—but 
we must be simple and humble in our manner of life 
if we would reach the poor and simple people around 
us. It would require half our life to convince them of 
our sincerity and sympathy if we were to go to them 
in ordinary social ways. Benevolent work in great 
cities has peculiar difficulties. We meet many who 
have never felt one touch of brotherliness from Chris¬ 
tians, and who have become embittered by the hard 
experiences of life. As they learn our errand they inevi¬ 
tably suspect us of mercenary motives. Professional 
religious and benevolent workers have in the past so 
uniformly worked with money that these poor people 
have the dreadful perversion firmly fixed in their minds 
that they work for money. Alas, alas, that Christian 
workers have become so sadly associated in the minds 
of the masses with money loving and money getting! 
“ How much do you get a head,” is their blunt ques¬ 
tion, “ for getting our children into the Sunday-school?” 
“ Who pays you for nursing our sick and cleaning our 
houses?” And nothing so surprises them into con- 


DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 191 

fidence and love as our simple answer, “No one 
pays us, we come only because we love you and want 
to help you if we may.” It is recompense better than 
any thing earth has to offer that we may disarm pre¬ 
judice and succeed in our work by the insignificant 
self-denial of working without a salary. We are un¬ 
salaried that there may be more laborers in the field. 
There is no such demand for philanthropic effort to¬ 
day in civilized lands as exists in great cities, and 
shame would be to us if in this great emergency we 
women should stand back on our “ rights ” and refuse 
to do what we can. 

Then there is another consideration: there has 
never been any money to pay salaries with. Every 
missionary society is constantly working up to the full 
measure of its financial ability in paying its regular mis¬ 
sionaries. It has been from the first not a question of 
salary or no salary, but no salary or no existence. 

I must devote a few moments to the consideration 
of our community life, for, while living in a commu¬ 
nity is not a necessary condition of deaconess work, 
the fact is that, since great cities are the principal scenes 
of deaconess work, deaconesses usually live in a com¬ 
munity. It is exceedingly economical, and is exceed¬ 
ingly pleasant. It solves the problem of helpful and 
congenial companionship. It is said that it will foster 
a tendency to an introverted and unnatural life; but we 
cannot think so, so long as continued residence is 
entirely voluntary, and so long as our workers are 
constantly in healthful contact with the outside world 
in their daily activities. Bear in mind also that there is 
no secrecy or mystery in our Deaconess Homes. This 
thing is not done in a corner. We do not even have 


192 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


“ visiting daysall our days are visiting days. We 
are modelled after the family. Absolute freedom in 
correspondence, such social life as does not interfere 
with our peculiar calling, and the privilege of leaving 
the Home at any time—these guard against any possi¬ 
ble tendency to danger. The happiest place on earth 
is doubtless the family, where the father and mother 
gather the little ones about their knees and each finds 
his highest joy in living for others; but the next happi¬ 
est place ought to be our Homes, out from which con¬ 
genial souls go, day by day, to the joy of working for 
others, coming back at night to sympathetic converse 
with each other, and, if need be, to wise and loving 
counsel from their superintendent. One of the most 
touching testimonies I have ever heard came from the 
lips of a deaconess who had long lived in crowded but 
lonely boarding-houses, but who was now rejoicing 
that God had “ set the solitary in a family.” 

The life of a deaconess is a happy one. I am 
talking to practical people, and one of the questions I 
anticipate is, “Will women volunteer to such trying 
and difficult service, and are they happy in it ?” To 
the first question, let me say that, though the work of 
deaconesses in the aggressive form in which I am pre¬ 
senting it to you to-day is only a little more than six 
years old in this country—and it began most humbly, 
not attracting much attention for a year or two—there are 
now three hundred women engaged in it in the Homes 
established in the large cities of our land. And the num¬ 
ber of applicants is constantly increasing. More letters 
have reached me this past month from women who 
are expecting to enter the work than in any preced¬ 
ing month in my life. As to whether deaconesses are 


DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 


193 


happy or not, the question is capable of almost mathe¬ 
matical proof. They stay in the work. They might 
go at any time. Large inducements have been offered 
to some to go, and yet they stay. Over and over 
again have I heard the testimony from their lips, “ I 
was never so happy in my life.” One of them wrote 
to her brother, with no thought of my ever seeing the 
letter, “ I believe I am as happy as any one can be out 
of heaven.” Another one told me, with mingled smiles 
and tears, “ I sometimes think I am going to die soon, 
I am so happy.” I know you will accuse me in your 
thoughts of overstating the case, but, dear friends, there 
is no such exquisite happiness on earth as the joy of 
helping others. To lift the desolate, helpless soul from 
sin and suffering to a life of hope, this is a work angels 
might covet, and it brings a joy that angels hardly 
know. You will remember that our Lord Jesus Christ 
himself, for the joy that was set before him, endured 
the cross, despising the shame. The little discomforts 
in a deaconess life, the weariness and watching, these 
vanish into an infinite insignificance in the face of the 
heavenly joy that our labors are, sometimes at least, 
crowned with success. It cannot be explained on 
natural grounds, I admit, but, dear friends, we possess a 
supernatural religion; why should we wonder that 
supernatural results should flow from it! 

I have been describing a work that is formally 
under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
but I wish to correct a false impression that may arise 
as to the character of its denominationalism. We 
actually have ladies of other evangelical denominations 
working right with us, shoulder to shoulder, as deacon¬ 
esses : the only difference being that these ladies do 
13 


Woman in Missions. 


194 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


not receive the special form of license given by the 
Methodist church. Then, as to our outside work, much 
of it is of such a character that it is necessarily unde¬ 
nominational. Most of those we help are outside the 
bounds of any church, and frequently that is just why 
they need help. We go wherever we can do good, 
making the one condition, “ Is there a need for our 
service here ?” And, recognizing this fact, people of all 
denominations are aiding in the voluntary contributions 
that form the chief part of our support. In one very 
large Home it is estimated that about one-third of the 
support comes from non-Methodistic sources. 

Let me say a word as to the admirable adaptation 
of our work to the needs of our great cities. In the 
first place, because it is religious. It is true that we do 
a vast amount of relief and humanitarian work—we 
have been forced to do it—but the great underlying 
motive of all is the religious one. I do not believe that 
any other motive would be strong enough to keep men 
or women in the continued prosecution of a work like 
ours, a work which frequently leads us into almost un¬ 
endurable depths of degradation. I am sure that money 
would not hire our women to do the work which fre¬ 
quently falls to their lot. Over and over again have I 
heard them say, “ Nothing kept me at my post but our 
motto, ‘ For Jesus’ sake 

And as the power of money over our women seems 
broken so also the fear of disease seems to be entirely 
removed. We used to have a rule that no nurse should 
be detailed to a contagious disease unless she were 
quite willing to go. The rule has fallen into disuse, 
simply because I have never been able to find a nurse 
who was not more than wdlling to go. 


DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 


195 


Moreover, nothing but a message which has help 
and hope for the moral and spiritual side of life would 
be at all adequate to the needs of the people we 
would help. Hunger of heart is just as real a pain, 
and just as hard to bear, as hunger of body. Our poor 
people need help for their souls quite as much as for 
their bodies. Because comfort and hope cannot be 
weighed in scales, or measured in quart cans, they are 
none the less real. About a year ago I was myself 
greatly interested in a poor mother who was clinging to 
a sick child, the last one of her little family of three 
children, with the hope born of despair, and yet with a 
despair that left no room for hope. It was an infidel 
family. The voice of prayer had never been heard in 
that home, yet as the mother leaned over the crib 
wherein lay her dying child, wringing her hands and 
exclaiming, “ What shall I do? What shall I do?” the 
nurse could give but one word, “ You must pray. God 
can help you.” “ I do not know how to pray,” she 
answered almost fiercely. “ I do not even know there is 
a God.” The baby died, and one March day, in the 
pouring rain, the father called on us again to help him 
make arrangements for the “ burial.” In so many in¬ 
stances, in our semi-foreign cities, people have burials 
instead of funerals. I called, myself, more than once at 
that mother’s door, but though I heard her moans I 
could not get access to her. It was the nurse who 
cared for her child v/ho finally reached her, and was the 
means of bringing comfort to her broken heart. It was 
not long before she became interested in our work for 
other children, helping as she could; and only a little 
while afterward, overtaken by sudden illness, she joined 
her baby in the land where no one says, “ I am sick.” 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


196 

Was it not as much our duty to minister comfort to 
that broken heart as to give bread to a hungry body ? 
And what she needed all the world needs—comfort in 
trouble and hope for the future. It may not know 
what it wants. It may be like a child “ crying in the 
nightbut as a child wants its mother so we know 
the world wants God—that the soul is for ever dissatis¬ 
fied till it finds rest in him. So our deaconess work, 
with its double message of help for body and soul, is 
perfectly adapted to the needs of great cities. 

Again, the ease with which we gain an entrance 
into the homes and hearts of the poor is a remarkable 
proof of our adaptation to the work. I have spoken of 
this above, and need not dwell upon it here. It is very 
rarely that homes do not open to us. And, once open, 
the influence of our women is unbounded. These poor 
people look upon the cultured, skilled woman who 
comes to help them in their distress, making no condi¬ 
tion except that there be a need for her, with little less 
than reverence. She can talk to them about a thousand 
things that could not otherwise be mentioned. The 
care of the home, personal cleanliness, sanitary condi¬ 
tions, the duty of the parent to the child—suggestions 
along all these lines will be kindly received when once 
we have gained the confidence of the people. 

And, last of all, let me speak of the economy of our 
work. We hope that, more and more, women will join 
us who will not only be self-supporting, but who will 
bring of their means for the support of others. This is 
certain to take place. If Miss Drexel threw herself 
with her millions into the arms of the Roman-catholip 
church, may we not expect similar instances of devo¬ 
tion in Protestantism ? Many of our women will doubt- 


DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 197 

less need support. The entire support of a deaconess 
in one of our Homes amounts to but two hundred dol¬ 
lars a y„ear. You will question whether we can make 
them comfortable at so little expense. Let me reply 
that their remaining with us demonstrates it; and we 
have had very few deaconesses break down in the 
work—usually temporarily, and women who were far 
from well when they came to us. If you ask how we 
can support our workers on so little, let me remind you 
of our wholesale purchases, the fact that we receive 
many gifts of provisions, and the inexpensiveness of 
our costume. We pay next to nothing for admin¬ 
istration, only the support of a deaconess manager 
in case that person does not support herself. We 
have no salaried solicitors, and no salaried examiners. 
We do not criticize the bodies of benevolent workers 
who are obliged to avail themselves of such help—we 
are not so unreasonable as to suppose that all forms 
of humanitarian work can be carried on as ours is ; 
but we simply state the fact. And we call upon you 
to rejoice with us that such work as ours is organ¬ 
ized in most of our large towns ; that the groan of the 
“ populous city ” has so entered into the hearts of three 
or four hundred earnest-hearted women that they have 
banded themselves together, making the supreme offer¬ 
ing of their lives; working wisely and well at this 
great problem of helping the church to carry the gospel 
to the poor. 


198 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


WOMAN AND EDUCATION IN MISSIONS. 

WORK OF WOMAN'S SCHOOLS AND COL¬ 
LEGES IN MISSIONS. 

BY MRS. DARWIN R. JAMES. 

The progress which the last half-century has 
witnessed in the material world has not been more 
evident than the advance in methods of work in mis¬ 
sions. 

Whereas, fifty years ago, man was the only one 
commissioned to carry the gospel, woman being sim¬ 
ply an adjunct in the form of a wife, to-day the women 
who publish the tidings in mission schools and higher 
institutions of learning are a great host. 

As an illustration of the remarkable growth of 
this branch of mission work allow me to cite facts in 
the history of the organization which I have the honor 
to represent: “ The Woman’s Executive Committee of 
Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church.” 

Organized in 1878, with no teachers or schools, 
the first year’s receipts were but $3,138; to-day, after 
but fifteen years, it numbers nearly 400 teachers, 150 
schools, with an income of $373,000. Multiply this 
society by the large number of women’s societies en¬ 
gaged in similar work in the fields of home and foreign 
missions, and one can form some conception of the 
magnitude of this agency. 

The philosophy of this advance is apparent when 


SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 199 

we consider the power of early education on after life, 
and the part woman is designed of God to take in this 
education. 

To know God is eternal life. This knowledge, 
which leads to an understanding of our relations to 
him and to our fellow men, which also quickens the 
intellect in its grasp of all truth, can not be imparted 
too early in life. 

It has been stated as a scientific truth that thoughts 
make courses in the brain, and after they are made 
these courses control the thoughts. However this 
may be, we have daily illustrations of the dominant 
power of early training in its influences on later years. 

In an eastern asylum is a man whose long years of 
Christian activity attest the genuineness of his conver¬ 
sion ; but his early education was neglected, and to¬ 
day, in his insanity, the profane utterances of youth, 
which in his lucid moments he abhors, come freely 
to his lips. 

Can one who for long years has been accustomed 
to do evil, until habit has forged its chains, maintain 
through after life the same steadfast character as an¬ 
other who was trained in early life to do well ? Has 
not the latter a superiority of character, a fixedness 
of purpose, a consistency of life, impossible to the 
former ? Recall the standard bearers in the church 
of your youth, those who were faithful to its inter¬ 
ests and the ordinances of God’s house, in season 
and out of season, and, with rare exceptions, you will 
go back to Christian parents, or a Christian mother. 

If, then, we would turn back the tide of generations 
of ungodliness we must begin, patiently and lovingly, 
with the children. Especially does this hold true 


200 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


when we consider that in establishing a Christian 
church in a heathen .community we must carefully 
train the leaders of the church, the pastors, elders, and 
teachers, with their wives, to whom sooner or later the 
maintenance of the church must be committed; and 
this work must begin early in life by careful training 
of the children, which must be done mainly by women. 
So gradual has been the change that has brought wo¬ 
man into the field as the principal educator of youth 
that we forget that the old-time illustration of ped- 
agogy was always a man with a ferule in his hand. 

How slow we have been to comprehend the 
necessity of the line-upon-line and precept-upon-pre- 
cept training of the Christian mother in the formation 
of stalwart, unflinching Christian character. 

The great need of the world to-day is the influ¬ 
ence of consecrated womanhood—Christian mothers. 
This need is supplied in a measure in our mission 
fields by our Christian teachers. 

The love for Christ and souls which leads a wo¬ 
man to leave home and friends for this service has a 
divine energy which, touching the dead soul of the 
child, is vitalizing in its power. Against the passion 
and instability of the heathen mother is off-set the 
patient tenderness and unswerving principle of the 
mission teacher. Six days in the week is this influence 
felt, and the result is certain. There must be some¬ 
thing wrong with the teacher in whose school there are 
not many conversions. Let us then consider, first, the 
influence of mission schools on individual lives, shap¬ 
ing the character of the future leaders; afterwards, that 
of the schools in a community. I must draw my illus¬ 
trations from schools established among the exceptional 


SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 201 


population of our own land, with which I am most famil¬ 
iar, and I shall choose from a wealth of material but 
a few, and those from a sex which our church rolls 
show are the least easily influenced. 

There drifted into a mission school under the care 
of a consecrated, faithful teacher, a boy of Roman- 
catholic parentage. Both parents were intemperate, the 
father alternating between life in some penal institu¬ 
tion and his wretched home. The boy’s forlorn ap¬ 
pearance and seemingly hopeless future appealed to 
the teacher’s sympathies, and she took him into her 
own heart as her own child. The love manifested in 
her patient forbearance with his faults, her words of 
encouragement and her prayers prevailed. I cannot 
take time to tell of parental opposition overcome in 
getting him into a distant training-school and through 
college, from which he graduated with high honor, 
then into the Theological Seminary, in which he is 
supporting himself by successful employment in mis¬ 
sion work. Suffice it to say, the salvation of this boy, 
through God’s blessing upon the faithful labors of this 
teacher, will, humanly speaking, in its results in in¬ 
fluencing other lives be a mighty power for good in 
the world, especially among those from whose ranks 
his life was drawn. 

A somewhat similar instance, in its lack of promise, 
occurs to me in connection with a Mormon school. A 
mission-school teacher in one of the villages in Utah 
was greatly annoyed by a rabble of boys whose leader 
seemed intent on driving her out of town. Stones 
were thrown into her windows, and every means used 
to frighten her into leaving, but she pluckily held the 
fort. One morning even the stove-pipe seemed to 


202 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


partake of the spirit of her adversaries, and fell down, 
resisting all attempts to put it in place. In despera¬ 
tion she called to the first passer-by for help. He came 
in, this same instigator of all her troubles, but he 
helped her to put up the pipe and received her thanks, 
with an invitation to come into the school. This invita¬ 
tion he accepted, and the teacher and scholar who had 
burned their fingers together became firm friends, the 
result of that teacher’s influence being that to-day one 
of the most successful pastors in Utah, one in whose 
church there is a constant revival, is he who was the 
teacher’s early tormentor. 

In the Indian Territory, the son of a chief whose 
tribe prided themselves upon their pure blood and their 
separation from the white race was attracted to a mis¬ 
sion school. The teacher of this school was an earnest 
Christian, and after he had finished the course of study 
at the day school her influence, with that of others, 
prevailed in inducing him to seek a higher education. 
The head men of the tribe held a council before he 
went and strongly opposed his going, their great fear 
being that he would espouse the white man’s religion. 
This he did, through the teacher’s influence, strength¬ 
ened by that of the training-school, and returned after 
three years an earnest Christian. 

The first few days they watched him closely, then 
at one of their dances they insisted on his joining them. 
He stoutly refused, and was called before their council, 
where he was told that this dance, as indeed all their 
dances, was in accordance with the religion of their 
fathers and they could not allow him to neglect it. 
He told them he had forsaken the religion of his 
fathers and entered into the service of the true God. 


SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 203 

When they found they could not move him they 
completely ostracized him. Still he held his faith, ob¬ 
tained a position as Government teacher and remained 
among them. This was ten years ago. During this 
time he has steadily continued his course alone, so far 
as the society of his people was concerned, though 
they have closely watched his life. 

Recently one of the tribe was asked what he 
thought of Thomas. He replied, “ Long time ago, 
you know, we none of us speak to Thomas, but now 
we see his way is a good way.” He said all the In¬ 
dians now favored his way of living. 

These illustrations, gathered from so large a num¬ 
ber equally interesting that choice has been difficult, 
must suffice to show results in individual cases. Mul- 
tiply these many fold and one may gain some concep¬ 
tion of the power of personal influence in these mission 
schools. 

One teacher writes, “ I have so many Christians 
among my scholars that, had we but a few older people 
for officers and a minister, a church could be organized 
at once.” 

In order to gain the best results in these day 
schools, and that the teacher’s strength be not over¬ 
taxed, but sufficient time be allowed for the personal 
attention each child should have, the number of schol¬ 
ars should be limited to an average of not over thirty; 
irregular students, as a rule, being dropped. 

For other reasons also the teacher must be guarded 
from exhausting her strength in the schoolroom. Her 
influence in the community is great. She has come to 
live among the people, and if her life is an incarnation 
of Christ the light will shine. 


204 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


Visiting the scholars in their homes, the parents’ 
hearts open to the loving interest shown in their wel¬ 
fare, words of truth take root, prejudice is overcome, 
love takes its place. 

Ofttimes the teacher is the only physician, and her 
simple remedies and knowledge of hygiene are of great 
value. If death occurs, she is frequently called upon 
to prepare the body for the grave and conduct the 
funeral services. 

In a pueblo in New Mexico, where an autocratic 
priest antagonized every effort of the teacher, a scourge 
of small-pox and diphtheria appeared. The priest fled 
but the teacher bravely held her post. Taking neces¬ 
sary precautions, she went about with remedies and 
advice, administering material and spiritual comfort, 
until the pestilence abated. Doors are now open to 
her that will never again be closed. Outside of school 
her influence among the young people is felt through 
the Bands of Hope, Christian Endeavor Societies and 
Literary Associations organized to attract from saloons 
and questionable amusements. She helps to turn the 
tide of Sunday desecration by attractive religious exer¬ 
cises. Besides the usual Sunday-school and Evening 
Service of Song, when there is no minister she oft- 
times conducts religious worship, reading a sermon or 
giving a Bible exposition, and in one instance we 
learned that the people enjoyed the teacher’s services 
better than the licensed minister’s who followed. 

As an illustration of the change possible in a com¬ 
munity through the mission schools alone, accompany 
me to a hamlet in New Mexico. Fourteen years ago, 
indolence, superstition and vice reigned. Though in 
a dairy country they knew nothing of the use of milk; 


SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 205 


plowing the ground with a crooked stick, their other 
methods of agriculture were in unison; houses and 
clothing were alike wretched. Go there to-day: the 
farms are well tilled, American implements of agricul¬ 
ture are used, houses are greatly improved, the people 
are well clad, milk, butter and fruit are seen upon their 
tables. But stay until Sunday comes. Who are those 
respectable looking people on their way to church ? 
Fathers and mothers with their children, undivided 
families, going together to the house of God. What 
has brought about this change ? The mission school; 
in this instance taught by a man and his wife who have 
transformed a region twelve miles in diameter. They 
have taught the men how to cultivate their land and care 
for their cattle; the women how to keep house, prepare 
their food, make the clothing for the family and take 
care of the children: besides this they have trained 
one colporter, six native evangelists, four elders, two 
deacons, four Sabbath-school superintendents, ten Sab- 
bath-school teachers, two public-school and four mis¬ 
sion-school teachers, and the influence of the mission 
has gone into all the country round about. 

Down into Virginia a Pennsylvania woman went, 
twenty-six years ago, and opened a school for negroes 
under an oak tree. Go there to-day : that woman is 
still in the field, but in that country you will find six 
Presbyterian churches, six schools, and a boarding- 
academy, with 172 scholars, in which three of the teach¬ 
ers learned their letters under that tree. One little fel¬ 
low who began under the oak-tree graduated at How¬ 
ard University with the highest honors of his class. 

These instances will sufficiently illustrate the, influ¬ 
ence of the mission day-school upon communities. 


206 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


Higher institutions of learning, academies, indus¬ 
trial training-schools and colleges, are also most valu¬ 
able aids in missionary work. 

The industrial training-school, in which secular, 
religious, and industrial education are combined, is an 
especially important adjunct, and the cottage system, 
though more expensive than housing the children in 
one or two large buildings, is greatly preferable, as 
being more homelike and bringing the children into 
closer relations with the teachers. Here the children, 
taken from heathen homes and early contact with vice, 
are trained to become civilized Christian leaders. In 
short, trained in Christian homes from which their own 
homes are to be modeled, they go out to perpetuate 
the influence of such homes among their people. 

Into one of these homes, made attractive by a 
young Indian wife who had been trained in an indus¬ 
trial boarding-school, came one day recently an old 
woman in her blanket. As she saw the young woman 
take out of the oven her well-baked loaves of bread, 
and noted the comfort and cleanliness of her home, she 
poured forth her lamentations that, though she had 
been taught in her youth to read, she had never been 
taught to work, and consequently such a home was 
impossible to her. 

Though these schools are of comparatively recent 
establishment the results are already apparent, in the 
Christian homes which are taking the places of the 
tepees of the Indian and the communal houses of the 
Alaskan. 

Moreover, the tide is turning; the moral strength 
and correct habits formed at school enable them not 
only to forsake the heathen customs of their people, 


SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 207 

but to withstand the fearful temptations of the wretched 
class of white men who, without family ties or the res¬ 
traints of society, have made these simple folk their 
easy victims. 

In Alaska, young people from these schools are 
banding together in a society called “ The Home Build¬ 
ers ;” its expressed object being, “ to make for ourselves 
such homes as will glorify God and lift up our people.” 
Thus united, the weak are strengthened, social advan¬ 
tages gained, and the meetings held take the place ol 
the old-time dances and feasts. There are many inter¬ 
esting incidents, which have come to our knowledge, 
showing how the turning tide has also brought blessings 
to the white man, but time will not permit me to give 
them. 

The industries learned at the schools prepare the 
young people to meet the new conditions of life and 
earn their living, the boys as farmers, carpenters, shoe¬ 
makers, engineers, etc.; the girls as seamstresses and 
domestic servants. One of the best teachers in Alaska 
is a native girl, and of another trained in one of these 
schools the Governor of Alaska said, “ I have never 
found her equal as a servant East or West. She plans 
and prepares our meals, does our marketing, bringing 
me her bill of the amount of money expended when she 
needs more. I have the utmost confidence in her 
truthfulness and honesty, so much so that I rarely ex¬ 
amine her accounts.” 

The daughter of the Governor added, “ Yes, all this 
is true; and she is an earnest Christian. I have found 
her in her room, night after night, studying her Bible.” 

A marked instance in the fruit of these mission in¬ 
dustrial boarding-schools has just been sent me by one 


208 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


of the teachers. She writes: “An Indian boy seven¬ 
teen years old was brought to us by the agent, to whom 
he had given so much trouble that he had been repeat¬ 
edly locked up in the guard-house. The agent begged 
us to take him and give him a trial but advised us to 
keep a close watch over him, as he had run away from 
the school where he had been previously placed. The 
teacher into whose care he was given felt some hesita¬ 
tion about taking him, fearing his contact with the others, 
but knowing that no religious influence had been 
brought to bear upon him she determined to make him 
a subject of prayer and do her best. It was not long 
before the sly, sulky look began to disappear from his 
face, and instead of being a hindrance, as the teacher 
had feared, he began to be a help. 

“ One day he came to the teacher with a friend, and 
asked her if she would allow them to come to her room 
one evening in the week to study the Bible, he felt so 
ignorant of religious truths. He also sought an oppor¬ 
tunity to talk with his cousin, who had been some time 
in the school, and she came to me and told me he 
wanted us all to pray for him, he found it so hard to do 
right. From the first the boy improved steadily, and 
when he went home to the reservation for the summer 
he joined the church near by, and while the missionary 
was away this boy, with his cousin, held prayer-meet¬ 
ings among his people. 

“He has returned to us this fall with his friend, and 
the boys we were warned to watch are now assisting 
us in every department of our work. The boy is pre¬ 
paring to become an evangelist, that he may assist the 
missionary with whose church he united, after he has 
finished his studies.” 


SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 20g 

These schools on the Indian reservations are 
great civilizers. Indians are especially devoted to their 
children, having so little else to cling to, and the im¬ 
provement in many of the dwellings of the Pima and 
Papago Indians, through the influence of a school but 
five years in operation on their reservation at Tucson, 
Arizona, is a striking evidence of this truth. They are 
close observers, and, appreciating the improved sur¬ 
roundings and appearance of their children when they 
come to visit them, they strive to better their homes 
when they return. During vacation they have their 
children’s help, and the good work goes on encourag¬ 
ingly. Farming implements are bought, sewing-ma¬ 
chines are indulged in, and in some instances the wo¬ 
men bring the machines many miles to the schools to be 
taught how to use them. One is deeply touched to see 
how sincere efforts to help their children are apprecia¬ 
ted by the parents, and what exertions they make to 
struggle upward towards civilization. 

A unique story, which carries its own moral, comes 
from a training-school in the mountains of the south. 
I give it in the teacher’s own words. “ Seven years 

ago, one Sabbath, while our household was at church 
service, a ragged, dirty, but pretty brown-eyed child of 
twelve years was put down on the ground of this 
school. The people who left her wanted to get rid of 
her. 

“ Some years before this time her mother had de¬ 
serted her, and as she had never known a father she 
was quite alone in the world. No, she was not alone, 
for the inherent vices of her ancestors were ever round 
her to open every door which could possibly lead her 
into temptation. Her mother’s family was of the low- 
14 


Woman in Missions. 


210 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


est and vilest character, and though the vicinity had 
many of her kin she never claimed relationship with 
any of them after coming into the school. In fact, of 
her own free will she discarded her family name and 
chose for herself the name of a woman whom the world 
delights to honor, a large-hearted, benevolent woman 
visiting the school at the time she came into our house¬ 
hold. She was very bright, and apt to learn, but the 
first time she was sent to a neighbor’s on an errand she 
stole a diamond ring. Although she could not always 
find diamond rings she for several years found other 
things she thought worth appropriating. She was not 
a faithful student or a good girl, but with all her naugh¬ 
tiness it was a constant surprise to hear her intelligent 
answers to Bible questions, and her insight into spirit¬ 
ual things was most remarkable. After living here four 
or five years school life seemed to become irksome to 
her restless disposition, and we agreed that she had 
better take a place to work in a family and earn her 
own living. We were not surprised to learn after a few 
months that she was engaged to be married, and we 
knew the man to be a good, honest Christian. Some 
one has said, ‘ A woman never finds her soul until she 
is in love,’ and this proved verily true in the case of 
our wayward lassie. She wrote us lovely, apprecia¬ 
tive letters; her heart seemed filled with gratitude that 
she had been kept pure, so that this great blessing 
might come to her, and that she had been taught how 
to work so that she might make a happy home for the 
man of her choice. 

“ She was married about three years ago. A year 
afterward a lovely little daughter came to bless their 
home. She paid us a visit, bringing the child with her, 


SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 211 

just old enough to trot about. The young mother 
showed such wisdom in the training of the child, such 
deep mother - love, that our hearts rejoiced that the 
Friend of little children had called us to the blessed 
work of training mothers. What would have been in 
place of that Christian home in the quiet mountain 
village, had not this school been established for the 
training of young girls in the truths of God’s word and 
the path of industry and virtue, it is easy to surmise.” 

Ofttimes just this isolation from early associations, 
possible only in a boarding-school, is necessary until a 
new life has had time to gain strength and overcome 
the power of early influences. In these boarding- 
schools, educational, missionary, and industrial training 
are combined. The aim is to equip the graduate fully 
for the battle of life. 

From a school for colored girls in Texas comes 
this statement of results of such efforts: “ Were I able 
to visit every church in the State I believe I could pick 
out the seminary girls at once, by their modest, quiet, 
dignified manner. So far as we have been able to 
follow these girls after they leave school they have for 
the most part been found faithful. They seemed to 
have passed into a new world. Their religion, instead 
of manifesting itself in noisy shouting, finds expression 
in Christian activity.” 

Many instances are cited of successful work in 
Sabbath and day schools maintained by these girls, of 
good employment obtained through correct knowledge 
of housekeeping and sewing gained here, and of model 
homes, which are object-lessons of great value. 

I have not time to illustrate the great advantage to 
a selected number of collegiate education. It not only 


212 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


prepares the natives themselves for the maintenance of 
Christian work among their own people, but raises up 
object - lessons for their encouragement. In a large 
training-school in Alaska one of the teachers is a na¬ 
tive who has had the advantage of higher education, 
which, with innate ability, has developed so noble a wo¬ 
man that she compares favorably with the best teachers 
in the school. The children look up to her as an ex¬ 
ample of what is possible, and sometimes ask, when 
making extra efforts, “ Can I ever become like Yonkit- 
ti Thlinkitti (our Thlinkit lady) ?” We rank among 
our most successful teachers in the different fields of 
Home Missions to-day many who through the aid of 
higher education are our co-laborers for the elevation 
of their own people. We should also lend a hand to 
these untutored people, through higher education, that 
they may stand upon a plane by our side and compel 
respect from those who would otherwise oppress them. 

God has made of one blood all nations to dwell 
together upon the face of the whole earth, giving dif¬ 
ferent endowments to different people, and the elevation 
of any one race adds to the wealth of the whole. We 
owe them this help upward by our own debt to those 
who rescued our ancestors from savagery. Nay, more. 
A higher obligation rests upon us. We are as much 
bound to give these uncivilized people all we have 
received of Christianity and education as we are to 
pay any debt for “ value receivedfor the “ value re¬ 
ceived” by us has been primarily from the Lord Jesus 
Christ himself, and the utmost we can do for the most 
degraded of our fellow beings will not compare with the 
magnitude of grace which he has shown toward us. 


EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 


213 


PLACE OF WOMAN'S MISSIONARY WORK 
AMONG THE EVANGELISTIC FORCES 
OF THE CHURCH. 

BY MRS. A. F. SCHAUFFLER. 

In no department of church work in these United 
States has there been seen a greater change during the 
past twenty-five or thirty years than in the develop¬ 
ment of woman’s power in organized effort. Doubt¬ 
less this change had its origin in the splendid service 
accomplished by our women during the war, when 
they first learned to use the strength which comes 
from close affiliation for active service. Any one who 
takes the pains to look through a file of newspapers 
dating from i860 to 1865 will be struck with the fre¬ 
quent mention of Ladies Aid Societies, and the Aux¬ 
iliaries to the Christian and Sanitary commissions. 
Here in these working bands, when husbands and 
brothers were at the front, in want of comforts and 
even necessities, our women learned how to cooperate in 
united service, because they were stirred by the same 
impulses and urged on by the same affectionate desire 
to help loved ones in times of need. The red flannel 
shirts, the knitted socks and mittens, the hospital 
stores of all kinds, bore witness, in their wonderful ac¬ 
cumulation, to the power of the women when hand 
was joined to hand. Each woman alone felt she could 
do but little, but with a force of like-minded sisters by 
her side what was there that she could not do ? As 


214 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


Florence Nightingale, in the hospital at Scutari, broke 
forcibly the bands of red tape v/hich had kept needful 
supplies from her English soldiers, so our women rose 
to protest against needless delays, and political jobs, 
in our hospital service, and saved by prompt action 
many a useful life. 

Now what can be more easy to understand than 
the fact that the women who had wielded this power 
should realize its possession when the need for its 
exercise in war times had happily passed away ? And 
when the condition of their less fortunate sisters was 
presented to them in forcible ways what is more nat¬ 
ural than that they should again form themselves into 
working bands to strive to ameliorate those con¬ 
ditions ? Ah! women are ready and anxious to work 
as soon as they know the need and understand the 
way in which it can be met. Lack of interest only 
comes from lack of knowledge, and the wide spreading 
of missionary facts brings as a corollary widespread 
missionary efforts. 

And now we face the question—What is the place 
of Woman’s Missionary Work among the Evangelistic 
Forces of the Church? 

We can say, in reply, that it is a power for good 
in four ways. 

First, in diffusing missionary information. The 
power exerted by our women’s societies in spreading 
missionary intelligence cannot be over - estimated. 
Oftentimes the men are too tired, or too absorbed in 
business, to read for themselves the Missionary Mag¬ 
azine, but they will listen with pleasure to the striking 
fact, or the interesting story, as it is related to them 
at the dinner table, or beside the evening fireside. 


EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 


215 


Women are natural hero-worshippers, and when the 
heroes are such men as Carey, Livingston, or Patteson, 
how easily they will speak of them, and their work, 
and the progress made on the fields which they opened 
up to the attention of the church. The study of mis¬ 
sionary literature covers a broad ground, and no one 
need be afraid of being narrow minded who pursues it 
thoroughly. AH political changes must be followed 
in order to understand’the difficulties, or the new privi¬ 
leges, of our missionaries; good books of travel must 
be read, to know about the people among whom they 
go; the different religions of the world must be un¬ 
derstood, that we may see where the darkest spots are 
and the greatest need of light; social problems must 
be considered; and have not the missionaries them¬ 
selves made contributions to the ethnological, botanical, 
meteorological and philological knowledge of the 
world which it would be a liberal education to master ? 
Our women are touching all this mass of information 
at many points, and no young girl prepares a paper 
for a missionary meeting, on the stations, the medical 
work or the evangelistic work of any given field, but 
she becomes wiser in the very preparation, no matter 
how simple her effort may be. A deacon in a New 
England Church was once asked, in a prayer-meeting, 
to pray for a certain mission. He excused himself on 
the ground that he did not know enough of that mis¬ 
sion to pray for it intelligently ! In fact he did not know 
whether to ask for success on missionary effort there 
or to give thanks that such success had been given. In 
the women’s societies such information is so constantly 
disseminated that the members know the condition of 
each mission field and can pray with intelligence. 


216 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS, 


In some societies a few choice books are procured 
from time to time and loaned to the members for a 
small fee, the money thus gained going towards the 
purchase of new books. It would be a capital plan at 
some auxiliary meetings if different ladies would give 
brief reviews of such books, stimulating interest and 
creating an appetite for a fuller acquaintance with the 
books themselves. Then the maps which are displayed 
at the women’s meetings do their own part in promo¬ 
ting intelligent interest in the progress of the kingdom. 
Can you not think of many churches where a mission¬ 
ary map is never shown except in the women’s meet¬ 
ings? The necessity for maps is illustrated by the 
fact of an old lady lingering after a meeting to study a 
map of China. When asked if any station could be 
pointed out to her, she said, “ No, I was only looking 
for Yucatan.” The foundation of all true interest is 
knowledge, and is not the foundation well laid in 
women’s meetings, with missionary magazines, books 
and maps ? 

Besides diffusing information, women’s societies are 
of great value in forming a sympathetic link with the 
workers on the field. There is in these days such an 
increase of postal facilities that none of our missiona¬ 
ries suffer from such isolation as was common a gene¬ 
ration ago, but how much nearer is home brought to 
the workers in China or Japan by the bright, warm¬ 
hearted letters of the stayers at home. Kenneth Mc- 
Kensie writes from North China to his friends in Eng¬ 
land, “ Let me tell you of six young Chinamen whom 
you can pray for by name , and then you will feel you 
are a part of the Chinese Mission.” How many are 
feeling just in that way! Their knowledge of a field 


EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 


217 


and its needs being so perfect, their sympathy with the 
workers there so entire, their prayers so earnest, that 
they are, to all intents and purposes, a part of that 
mission. And then the loving gifts which willing 
hands send out in boxes ! How plainly they speak to 
our sisters far away of the love for them and for our 
common Saviour which influenced the giver. 

Secondly. Woman’s missionary zeal is a power 
in planning and carrying on specific work for women 
and children. It is not necessary for me to speak of 
the Zenana work in India, the household visits in 
China, the schools in Africa, or the mothers’ meetings 
in our own great cities. How clearly all these depart¬ 
ments of woman’s work for women stand out before us ! 
Men could not do this work, and if women were not 
doing it it would not be done. Think of the schools 
organized and maintained, at home and abroad, through 
the efforts of our missionary societies—and, remember, 
school work is not the mere teaching of a book, it is a 
moral and spiritual force ; a fragrance that gladdens; a 
breath that gives help; a touch that quickens into life ; 
it is a divine atmosphere in which young souls thrive. 

Listen to the testimony of Miss Fletcher, who has 
recently gone out to China. She writes from Hong 
Kong: 

“I have been a few times to a cottage meeting in 
a poor street near us. I only go to look on, keep my 
ears open, and learn what I can. Our Bible-woman 
seems to talk very simply, and some of the women who 
have listened to the gospel message for a long time are 
gradually taking it in. They have souls to be saved 
and hearts that can feel joy and sorrow, but the brains 
of the poor Chinese women are not called forth by 


218 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


their every-day life and it is a slow process to set them 
in motion, especially regarding the soul and eternity.” 

The devotion and perseverance of Mrs. Hemmings 
of South America, who has met with such success in 
her work among the women of Terra del Fuego, are 
inspiring. The Yahgan Indians of this region are 
genuine savages, but she set about teaching the women, 
first of all, to be industrious and useful. A sort of 
mothers’ meeting was gathered in her kitchen and she 
attempted to teach the women to knit. The counting 
of stitches seemed an insuperable difficulty, for the 
Yahgans are only able to count up to three, but Mrs. 
Hemmings was ingenious in contriving ways to impart 
the necessary knowledge, and these women now do 
excellent knitting-work of all sorts. This is a decided 
triumph, when it is remembered that Darwin declared 
these people to be incapable of moral or intellectual 
elevation. Mrs. Hemmings next determined to teach 
them to spin their wool, and on returning to Eng¬ 
land for a holiday learned the art of carding, dyeing, 
spinning and weaving wool, in order to teach the poor 
Indians this industry. She has mastered the art, and a 
few weeks ago sailed from England with a loom for 
Oooshooia. 

At first sight it seems a waste of time for an edu¬ 
cated woman, full of evangelistic zeal, to spend her 
time in teaching poor women to knit, but if, as the 
apostle says, if by any means she can win some to 
Christ, how can the time be better spent than in open¬ 
ing their darkened minds, first to human kindness, 
then to practical usefulness, and lastly to the gospel 
truth ? And the same is true in our “ Mothers’ 
Unions,” and “ Helping Hands ” in our own great 


EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 21Q 

cities. If you win the women’s hearts how much 
easier it is for you to give, and for them to receive, 
the offer of salvation. Let us not forget also that 
in the women’s meetings many a woman evangel¬ 
ist is being trained, so that the missionary will multi¬ 
ply her power for usefulness by sending out those who 
can tell the gospel story where her own voice could 
never reach. A personal invitation to come to Christ 
carries with it the divine blessing and brings oftentimes 
the hoped-for result. Christ might have given the 
gospel message to angels to deliver, but you will re¬ 
member he gave it into the keeping of Christians. 
Even when there was an angel on the spot, at the 
house of Cornelius, he was not to tell the story of the 
cross^but Peter was to come on purpose. Let us be 
true to our trust, and carry the gospel standard brave¬ 
ly, even as it was carried by such women as Fidelia 
Fiske, Mrs. Judson, Mrs. Moffat or Miss Rankin. Are 
not our own missionaries on the field a constant remind¬ 
er to put down selfishness and live for others ? 

The field of usefulness is so wide that more work¬ 
ers are needed as much at home as abroad. Women 
have opened up a thousand forms of helpful effort, 
such as day nurseries, industrial schools, Bands of 
Hope and Helping Hands, and in all these the root is 
to be found in the desire to show the love of Christ in 
practical form. All this is good, very good, but what 
an opening there is for volunteers to take up this exist¬ 
ing, well-organized work, and release those of more 
experience that they may have leisure to plan new 
efforts in directions where they are much needed. 
What a call there is for well-chosen ways to help the 
blind girls of China, and the outcast women of Bom- 


220 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


bay ! Are we just to stand still, when we hear such 
calls as these, and say “ our hands are full,” or are we 
to press on to the greater heights of consecrated effort ? 
Do we realize that the same Lord who has opened 
closed doors in answer to our prayers is as able to 
give us a victorious entrance ? God is as able to help 
us do the work as to show us where it lies. 

It is the old story: a few are doing the work that 
many should be doing, and the burden is heavy. 
Women’s missionary societies will never have their 
right place among evangelistic forces of the church 
until every woman in the church recognizes that she 
has a share in this great privilege of work, and if un¬ 
able to give her personal service will give her sympa¬ 
thy and her prayers. Let us ask you one question : 
if you are not putting all the energy of which you are 
capable into this work, what are you saving it for ? 

Thirdly. Women’s missionary societies are a 
power in promoting systematic giving. 

How truly Dr. Pierson says that there are “ regions 
beyond, of consecrated giving.” Our women’s socie¬ 
ties are a power in the way they have developed this 
idea and have brought the small sums into the treasury 
of the Boards which might otherwise have never been 
gathered. When a woman once has her heart set on 
giving to a cause she loves she will find a way. If 
she cannot find a way she will make one. Listen to 
this short item, which covers years of drudgery: 

“ Rebecca Cox, of Galway, N. Y., has left to the 
Baptist Woman’s Missionary Society a legacy of $800, 
earned by weaving rag carpets.” 

I think that money so earned and given goes far. 

It is most touching to hear of the loving sacrifices 


EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 


221 


made on mission fields by those who have recently 
come to the knowledge of the truth. Miss Gordon 
Cummings tells of the “ Lord’s rice box,” which the 
native Christians of Ceylon fill from their scanty store. 
Mrs. Hume of Bombay says that the native girls in 
her school there earned five dollars by sewing, which, 
after long discussion, they decided to send to help the 
City Mission in New Haven! I often think of what a 
poor lad in one of our mission chapels in New York 
wrote to me when sending ten dollars for missionary 
work in India. It was simply this : “ I think the 

devil needs fighting with money as well as with pray¬ 
ers and it has been well said that we have no right 
to pray until we have given. 

You have doubtless heard Professor Drummond’s 
story of the Italian coast guard who reported to the 
Government in regard to a shipwreck : “We saw the 
wreck, and we attempted to give every assistance 
possible through the speaking-trumpet; notwithstand¬ 
ing which, next morning twenty corpses were washed 
ashore.” I am afraid some are working in just such 
ways as this—with words but no deeds. 

But one most gratifying sign has been seen of 
late years, and that is the desire of women of means to 
go at their own charges into missionary work, or to 
pay for a substitute. May God hasten the time when 
it will be the rule for every well-to-do Christian wo¬ 
man to pay the salary of a worker before she plans 
elaborate toilettes for herself or lavish expenditure on 
the appointments of her table. Women’s missionary 
societies promote the spread of knowledge: with 
knowledge comes interest, with interest comes the de¬ 
sire to give material aid, and when the heart is on fire 


222 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


with love and gratitude what bounds are there to the 
interest and the desire to help ? 

A little money goes far on the foreign field. Lis¬ 
ten to this item, cut from a recent number of the 
“ Christian ” : 

“In illustration of what can be done with a small 
amount of money, Rev. Mark Williams, of Kalgan, 
China, explained at the recent Mission Conference in 
Clifton Springs what ioo dollars will do in a year, in 
North China, i. It will maintain a boys’ day-school 
of twenty-five, as it will pay the rent of the room and 
salary of the teacher. 2. It will maintain three boys 
in a boarding school. 3. It will pay the salary of two 
native preachers. 4. It will pay the wages of two 
colporters, who not only sell but explain the Bible. 5. 
It will support a station class of twenty men who 
spend all their time for three months in Bible study.” 

Last, but not least, Woman’s Missionary Work is 
a power in the training of the young to an intelligent 
interest in missions. 

The training of the young in Mission Bands falls 
upon the women who have themselves been trained in 
the women’s societies; and what a field of usefulness 
is opened here! To train the boys and girls of the 
present time in a wise interest in missions is to help to 
evangelize the world, for in a few years they will be at 
the front in all the great activities of life, and will have 
the power and the will to influence largely their time 
and generation. Only seven years of this century re¬ 
main to us. Shall we make them the best years the 
century has seen in concentrated efforts to advance the 
coming of the Kingdom by wise planning and vigor¬ 
ous action ? Shall we show to our young people, by 


EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 223 


our lives, what are the things that we most surely be¬ 
lieve: are they the promises of God, or the value of 
literature and art in the uplifting of the world ? 

It is impossible to say when a child is too young 
to receive a permanent impression in regard to mis¬ 
sionary work which may influence the whole life. Miss 
Agnew, who worked so long and with such great suc¬ 
cess in Ceylon, formed her intention to be a missionary 
when she was only eight years of age, after hearing an 
address on the foreign work. She was thirty before 
her circumstances were such that she was free to go, 
but her purpose never faltered. Let every woman who 
works as a Band leader be full of a cheerful courage 
as she prays to God that some such noble workers 
may come from the young people whom she is training 
in the best of all knowledge. Shall our young people 
know well about those whom the world calls heroes 
and be ignorant of the heroes of the Cross ? Shall 
they have the life history of Charles of Sweden, or 
Peter the Great, at command and know nothing of 
Gilmour of Mongolia, or Mackay of Uganda ? Is it 
not time that in our Christian day-schools there should 
be introduced a History of Missions? Is not the 
progress of Christ’s kingdom of more importance than 
the “ Rise and Fall ” of ancient Rome! What a sphere 
is opened here for the influence of Christian women! 

We form the best idea of the value of anything in 
this world by thinking of the void there would be if it 
did not exist. Dwell for a moment on the loss there 
would be to the Evangelistic Forces of the church if 
all the women’s work were blotted out. Think of the 
schools which would close their doors, of the medical 
work which would be forsaken, the lonely lives in the 


224 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


zenanas no longer brightened, the mothers’ meet¬ 
ings given up, the evangelistic tours abandoned, 
and the piles of Bibles and tracts which would be 
left undistributed. Think of the lepers left in hopeless 
misery, the blind no longer taught to read, and, turn¬ 
ing your thoughts homeward, look at the empty boxes 
in the Treasury, which once the women filled with 
loving zeal, and listen to the quiet which prevails 
where earnest voices were once heard in prayer. Do 
you like to study this picture ? Does not every fibre 
in your nature call out in protest ? 

But pause, before going as far as this, and im¬ 
agine that you simply took away from any given 
church the woman most filled with the missionary 
spirit, putting in her place a worldly-minded Christian. 
Would the church or the community notice the dif¬ 
ference ? Perhaps not. But take away a dozen such 
women, and fill their places with indifferent, careless or 
fashionable women, and suddenly you would find 
people saying, “What is wrong? The life of the 
church has disappeared.” 

Take away all the women who are interested in 
Christian Temperance work and fill their places with 
those who take a glass of wine daily and love to see it 
on their tables. Would there not be a distinct loss in 
the moral tone of the church ? 

Remove all the women full of zeal for City Mis¬ 
sions, with their varied activities, and put in those 
women who spend their summers in Europe and their 
winters in Florida, in entire disregard of their duties not 
only as Christians but as citizens, and would not the 
city begin to notice something wrong ? 

Then suppress all those who care with intensity 


EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 225 

of purpose for home missions and who urge the for¬ 
mation of the industrial schools which are to raise 
the standard of education throughout our land, and 
fill their places with silly women as devoid of patriot¬ 
ism as of true religion. How long would it be before 
the church and the country would cry out, “ Where are 
the workers ?” 

Then take away those women who have the gift of 
enlarged vision, and whose eyes are open to the need 
in Japan or Korea, and whose ears are quick to hear 
the call for help from their sisters far away, and put in 
their stead a group of women whose lives begin and 
end at home, in selfish devotion to their own families, 
and is there not a distinct loss of spiritual uplifting 
power in the church ? In such a way as this perhaps 
we can best judge of the value of woman’s missionary 
work. The women who do the work are themselves a 
power, and they could be ill-spared from our churches 
and from our land. 

Let the last words of the Women’s Congress of 
Missions be like a bugle call, to urge upon the women 
of our churches to be more active in diffusing informa¬ 
tion ; more zealous in carrying on the old work; more 
wise in planning for the new ; more careful in systematic 
giving, and more devoted to the proper training of our 
young people. So shall we hasten the coming of the 
KINGDOM. 


Woman In Missions. 


15 


226 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

Written for the Woman’s Congress of Missions, Chicago, 1893. 

BY EDNA DEAN PROCTOR. 

What was the song the angels sang, 

At midnight over Bethlehem’s plain— 

The song that made the sad earth young 
With the burst of its far, celestial strain ? 

Glory to God in the highest, thrilled 
The air with the bliss of heaven; and then, 

To a softer note the song was stilled: 

And on earth peace, good will toward men. 
O holy song, transcendent night, 

When the boon of the waiting years was won; 
When faith was lost in rapturous sight, 

And the Kingdom of God on earth begun ! 

The Kingdom of God ! Was it lands and seas, 
Temples, palaces, power and pride? 

Learning, and beauty, and lordly ease ? 

Nay ! earth’s glories were swept aside— 

Pitiful, passing, phantom things— 

Fading as stars when dusk is done 
And morning soars on radiant wings 
To herald the great, victorious sun ! 

The Kingdom of God is love and peace; 

Brotherhood ; purity undefiled ; 

Sacrifice ; service; care’s release ; 

The simple trust of the little child ; 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 


22 7 


Bliss for the soul though joys depart; 

Thirst for righteousness; high endeavor ; 

The reign of the meek and lowly heart ; 

Rest in the Lord for ever and ever. 

And who were his court, and what his throne— 
This Prince whose advent thrilled the air ? 

Were trumpets of fame before him blown ? 

Did carving and purple his couch prepare, 

And rabbi and haughty Roman tread 

With joy in his steps by mount and mart ? 

Ah, no ! to the poor and outcast wed, 

No place had he to pillow his head, 

And his only throne was the loving heart. 

But oh, the freedom, and oh, the rest 
He brought to the prisoned, burdened soul! 

Come unto me, was his sweet behest, 

And leave for ever your care and dole; 

And Oh, his pity and tender cheer 
For the weary women who thronged his way : 

The living water, the lightened bier, 

The full forgiveness, the silent tear, 

For sister and mother and friend were they ; 

And to hei who touched his robe, to glow 

With the tide of life through her veins that stole, 
Gracious he answered, Daughter, go 

In peace, thy faith hath made thee whole. 

And when to his glory entering in, 

And hovering heaven and earth between, 

The watcher his earliest word to win 
Was Mary the loving, the Magdalene ! 


228 


WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 


We see him not. He walks no more 
By Zion and Jordan and Galilee, 

But, sweet as the song the night winds bore, 

And rich with meaning unknown before, 

His words ring out as they rang of yore, 

Go FORTH, AND TELL THE WORLD OF ME ! 

O Heart of Love ! we have heard thy call; 

And in peril and exile, grief and blame, 

We have followed thy feet where the shadows fall 
That the wave and the wild might praise thy name 
Our dead are wrapped in the polar snows; 

They sleep by the palms of tropic seas; 

The wind of the desert above them blows; 

The coral island their slumber knows : 

They who have drained thy cup to the lees 
And counted it joy, yea, blessedness, 

To be spent for thee and for thee to die! 

So they have gained, through toil and stress, 

“ Well done !” where the river of life goes by. 
Their fields are ours ; and lo ! a song 

From the countless reapers swells to thee, 

As they bind the sheaves while the days are long, 
And dream of the harvest yet to be: 

“ Through storm and sun the age draws on 
When heaven and earth shall meet, 

For the Lord has said that glorious 
He will make the place of his feet; 

And the grass may die on the summer hills, 

The flower fade by the river, 

But our God is the same through endless years 
And his word shall stand for ever. 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 


“ ‘ What of the night, O watchman set 
To mark the dawn of day ?’ 

‘ The wind blows fair from the morning star, 
And the shadows flee away. 

Dark are the vales, but the mountains glow 
As the light its splendor flings, 

And the Sun of righteousness comes up 
With healing in his wings.’ 

“ Shine on, shine on, O blessed Sun, 

Through all the round of heaven, 

Till the darkest vale and the farthest isle 
All to thy light are given! 

Till the desert and the wilderness 
As Sharon’s plain shall be, 

And the love of the Lord shall fill the earth 
As the waters fill the sea!” 

The song is one with the angels’ peace ; 

The toil is the path the Master trod: 

Hail to that day of blest release 
When the woes of the weary world shall cease 
In the light and joy of the kingdom of God 


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^]\few JVEissioiiary Bool^s.-f^- 


I. American Heroes on Mission Fields. 

Edited by Rev. H. C. Haydn, D. D. i2mo. $i 25. 

Brief biographies of eminent missionaries by competent 
hands. The names of the missionaries are: Mrs. Clara Gray 
Schauffler, Henry Sergeant West, M. D., Rev. David Tappan 
Stoddard, Asahel Grant, M. D., Rev. William Goodell, D. D., 
Rev. Titus Coan, Rev. Harrison Gray Otis Dwight, S. W. Wil¬ 
liams, LL. D., Rev. E. C. Bridgman, D. D., Miss Julia A. Rap- 
pleye, Rev. Adoniram Judson, Rev. W. G. Schauffler, D. D., 
Rev. John Eliot. 

Among the writers are Drs. Hamlin, Gilman, Haydn, 
Bartlett, and others. 

“ A capital book to put into the hands of our young peo¬ 
ple.” NORTHWESTERN PRESBYTERIAN. 

- “ Our monthly concerts would not be so devoid of inter¬ 
est if every giver for missions should possess this volume.” 

MISSION FIELD. 

II. Social and Religious Life in the Orient. 

By Krikon Hagop Basmajian. With many illustrations by 
native artists. 247 pp. i2mo. $1. 

An attractive book by a native Armenian (now a Protes¬ 
tant) on the country (Turkey), the missionaries, the Govern¬ 
ment, the religion, social life, customs, and amusements. 
Profusely illustrated. 

III. Seven Years in Ceylon. 

Stories of Mission Life. By Mary and Margaret W. Leitch. 
With portraits and over one hundred illustrations. 170 pp. 
Quarto. 75 cts. 

A very pretty book, giving actual every-day experiences 
in mission-life during the 6even years spent in Ceylon by 
these gifted ladies. 

AnjeriQaiJ Tract Society, 



New Books 


FROM OLIVET TO PATMOS: The First Chris- 
tian Century in Picture and Story. 

By Mrs. L. S. Houghton. Quarto. Profusely 
illustrated. $i 50. 

This is a continuation of Mrs. Houghton’s popular series of 
Bible books, of which “ The Bible in Picture and Story ” and 
“ The Life of Christ in Picture and Story ” have already been 
published. It gives the story of the apostles and the interesting 
history of the Christian Church in the first century, introducing 
an account of the Epistles in the order of the history. 

It forms a very entertaining narrative for either old or 
young, which is rendered still more attractive by numerous and 
excellent illustrations. 

By the same author , and uniform. 

THE BIBLE IN PICTURE AND STORY. 

Quarto. 269 illustrations, many of them full-page. 
240 pp. Cloth, $1 25 ; gilt extra, $1 75. 

The same book in German, with the same illus¬ 
trations and the same price. 

“This volume is adapted to catch the attention and win the 
interest of every child. There is a picture on every page of the 
two hundred and forty which make up the handsome quarto.” 

CHRISTIAN INTELLIGENCER. 

LIFE OF CHRIST IN PICTURE AND STORY. 

Quarto. 296 pp. 190 illustrations. $1 50; gilt 
edges, $2. 

The same book in German, with the same illus¬ 
trations and the same price. 


AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, NEW YORK. 




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